Between the Bars
by KS-fan
Summary: The Brotherhood is captured by an anti-mutant group. If you like Brotherhood angst, especially Lance angst, this is the fic for you!
1. Default Chapter

Hi everyone! This is my second Evolution fix, and like my first one, this focuses almost entirely on Lance. If you're a Brotherhood pathos fan, especially Lance pathos, this is the fic for you.  
  
I love reviews wherever I can get them, but please keep all criticism constructive. No flames. To avoid flames, I will warn you, at some point this story will contain: torture, character death, violence, and self- mutilation. I try to deal with such subjects in a realistic light (or at least realistic in the X Men universe), but if I fail at this, please let me know so I can learn from my mistakes.  
  
Disclaimer- I own nothing.  
  
Rating- R  
  
Because of the way Fanfic.Net works, means emphasis italics. 


	2. Bait and Capture

Between the Bars  
  
On the night of May 27, there was no moon.  
  
The four shadows skulking through the tall grass just outside of Westchester, New York were trying to use this to their advantage. Thus far, they were failing.  
  
Lance Alvers stood at the head of the line and shook his head. Truly ridiculous, using the cover of darkness in hopes that it might aid them in their mission, he thought. You can't exactly hide a guy like Fred. It's not without good reason that they call him the Blob. Not to mention poor Pietro who, although he would go to great lengths to deny it, was terrified of the dark. Lance couldn't take two steps without the boastfully proud speed demon from grabbing his arm and gasping, "Did you hear that?" At least Toad was enjoying himself. The youngest of the boys, he hopped along beside the line, searching for an early breakfast.  
  
"Yo, Avalanche, when we gonna get there?" he asked, casually lapping up a beetle.  
  
"Damn it Todd, I told you to stop that!" Lance growled. "It's disgusting. And for the thousandth time, we'll be there soon! Just over this hill, I think."  
  
Pietro grabbed Lance's arm. "Did you hear that?" he whispered.  
  
Lance sighed. So much for his crack squad of super spies.  
  
The air just above the field sat heavy on their shoulders. Lance glanced up at the lightless sky, wishing again that he had chosen the mission date based on the weather and not the moon. The clouds had rolled in thick, and a storm was well on its way. Most likely, they'd encounter some flooding within a few hours. It could be worse, he mused. We could have worn our costumes. I highly doubt even Toad could swim for it with that metal armor strapped to his back.  
  
"Hey, I see something," Blob whispered.  
  
"WHAT!? WHAT IS IT!?" Quicksilver cried.  
  
"SHHHH!" Lance and Todd warned, just as Blob answered, "It's the office, you dumb ass."  
  
The offices of Cornerstone Corporations loomed in the shadows across the field. There were some reports and rumors that the company donated money to support anti-mutant groups, such as the Friends of Humanity. The Brotherhood, deciding it was time they lived up the their reputation, planned to break in and delete a few files. Seemed like a simple mission.  
  
At least it would be simple for mutants, Lance mused.  
  
The windows of the building were pitch black, unless of course, you had the night vision of an amphibian.  
  
"Ok Toad, you're up," Lance whispered.  
  
"Sure thing, boss," Toad said with a mock salute, before lapping up another large insect, causing Lance to shudder. Then, with next to no effort whatsoever (which is the only kind of effort Todd ever makes), the half frog, half irritating dirt bag leaped fifteen feet in the air and grabbed on to a second story balcony with his tongue. Pulling himself up, he then began his task of surveillance.  
  
The Brotherhood waited impatiently for Toad to scan the windows. Pietro had wedged himself between Lance and Fred for protection. "Man, I don't like it out here," he whispered. "I feel like someone's watching us."  
  
"Pietro, will ya stop being so paranoid? You know that you could out run anything in those woods, right?" Fred muttered, just as Toad jumped back down to ground level.  
  
"Coast is clear, yo. No security gaurds or nothing, at least none that I saw. There's some cameras in the corners and an alarm system, but that's it."  
  
"Alright, good job Toad," Lance said. "Everyone ready?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"OK then, let's get going."  
  
Pietro took one last moment to look back over his shoulder into the dark woods before everything moved into action.  
  
The sound of breaking glass crashed though the night air as Blob punched a hole in the glass door. 'WOO! WOO! WOO!' rang the alarm, until he punched a hole in that as well.  
  
"Ok Pietro, you next," Lance ordered.  
  
Before the command even finished leaving Lance's mouth, Quicksilver had dashed around the building foyer and disarmed every security camera in the room. "Done!" he announced proudly. Lance rolled his eyes and marched past him, the rest of the Brotherhood in tow.  
  
"Should be this way," Lance said quietly, leading them all into a dark room full of computers. He pulled up a rolling chair and sat at the terminal. "Blob, Toad, you guys are lookout. Keep by the door." The room then became silent, save for the soft whispering of Lance's fingers tapping the keys.  
  
"Avalanche? You hear that?" Pietro said, leaning over the shoulder of the team captain.  
  
The teen whirled around in the chair. "Yeah, I do. I hear you interrupting me when I'm to get this finished before we get caught." He turned back to the monitor. "Just hang on a sec, Ok? I'm almost done." Lance continued to pull up windows and type in commands. "Ah, here we go," he said, punching up the delete key.  
  
Within five seconds, three things happened. Pietro sighed in relief, Blob asked if they could go get something to eat, and the door to the computer room slammed shut all by it self.  
  
"Oh man, what's going on!?" Pietro yelled.  
  
"Shit, I think we're caught!" Lance shouted back.  
  
"Wait a second.what is that?" Toad said.  
  
Everyone in the room went instantly silent. A strange hissing noise was coming from the corner.  
  
Blob was the first to break the silence. "You think it's a bomb?"  
  
"Don't be stupid," Toad said. "Bombs don't hiss, yo. Bombs tick. Snakes hiss."  
  
"There are in office buildings," Lance declared angrily. He slunk off toward the corner to investigate. "Must be something else." A small hole had been drilled in the wall. Strange, Lance thought. Then he caught a whiff of something. "Oh Shit! It's some kind of gas! Everyone hold your breath!"  
  
But of course, no one can hold their breath forever, and within two minutes, four teenage boys were passed out on the floor.  
  
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Just outside the offices of Cornerstone Corporations, the two men that had been so closely watching the Brotherhood only ten minutes before sat quietly amongst the trees. The tall one on the left spoke quietly into his cell phone.  
  
"Yes, that's right. Operation Bait and Capture has been a success. We have four mutant captives, I repeat, four male mutant captives, between the ages of 13 to 20. We should be back at home base within 12 hours."  
  
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A blinding light shone down from the ceiling, reflecting harshly off of every surface in the metal room. Lance winced and squinted his eyes. It was so bright in here; it made him want to puke.  
  
Slowly, he groaned and rolled over to see if he could find the rest of the Brotherhood. Toad was curled up in the corner, Pietro was passed out a few feet away, and Blob was sprawled out on his back against the opposite wall, looking something like a giant pile of putty with clothes. Ok, so everyone is here, Lance thought. Now the real question: Where were they?  
  
Was this some kind of prison? Lance doubted it, as it was far too sterile to be a prison. More like a doctor's office. Ok, so maybe it was a testing facility. So what do they want with us?  
  
'You're mutants, stupid,' he thought. 'Everyone hates and fears you.' Ah. So it was kind of place. Lance sighed and rubbed his eyes. Suddenly, he had one monster of a headache.  
  
"Lance, yo, where are we?" Toad rose from his spot in the corner. The others were stirring as well.  
  
"I'm not sure, but I'm betting it isn't friendly." Lance got up and went to examine the door, which was metal like the rest of the room. He jiggled the handle and turned back to the others. "Locked."  
  
Pietro raced over to the door. With a speed that could only come from him, his hands darted around the frame. Frustrated, he sighed loudly. "There must be some kind of way out of here."  
  
"Said the joker to the thief," Toad sang out. "Too much con-fuuuusion."  
  
"Shut up, Toad! Those of us with brain cells are to figure out an escape plan." Lance began to rap on the walls. "Anyone know what kind of metal this is?"  
  
"It doesn't much matter, Lance," Pietro said. "Unless these walls are aluminum foil, Blob can't bust us out of here. It's too thick."  
  
Lance sat down and put his head in his hands, trying to think. "We don't know where we are," he said to himself. "We don't know why we're here. Our cell is about 10 by 12 feet and entirely metal. We have four sleeping mats, four pillows, and our powers. And a bucket," he added, glancing into a corner. His nose wrinkled a bit at that, once he realized its purpose. "Gross. There are no vents or any other weaknesses in the room. We have no clue who is holding us here." Lance looked up at his friends. "You guys. we are completely screwed."  
  
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Ok, so that's the end of chapter one. Do you like it? 


	3. The Guards

Hey, I'm back! I need to explain a few things I forgot in the first disclaimer. This takes place just after the first season, so Mystique is gone. Also, this is very out of cannon. Also, I have a retraction. I forgot that in the cartoons and the comics, the towns are different. Now that I think of it, Westchester isn't right for the comics either (Isn't that a town in England?) Please ignore it.  
  
Thanks to Lost Angel, Person, Miracle Chick, and Incrediblecuznz for the reviews. Miracle Chick, I'm going to get to the part about his powers in this chapter. If I had had him use them before, it wouldn't have been a surprise! (  
  
Nothing is mine, it's all Marvel's.  
  
Dear Santa,  
I have not been very good this year, but  
the only things I want are a clock and a calendar.  
Thanks  
  
Your pal,  
Lance Alvers.  
  
'Wow, I really am going insane,' Lance thought. He sat propped up against the wall furthest from the door staring at the chrome walls. Chrome. He was sick to death of staring at the color chrome, a color so monotonous it almost seemed to suck the sanity right from his brain. As of this moment he wanted nothing more than to know the time, the date, and perhaps to see a color or two.  
  
Thus far, the whole group spent the time in silence, stewing in their fear. In this place, it was impossible to tell time, but at least a fairly large chuck of time had passed, and no one had come to see them or ask them any questions. The only breaks in the non- existent routine were the two times they had been fed; trays slid though a slot in the door. Lance had thought his food tasted kind of funny, but he didn't think a complaint to the chef would be taken all that seriously here, and besides he was hungry, so he ate it anyway.  
  
There was something else that bothered him as well. 'How can they possibly know about our diets?' he thought, running a hand through his brown hair. 'How can they know that Pietro needs more vitamins because of his metabolism? How do they know that Toad and Blob eat mostly protein? Well, I guess Blob wasn't much of a stretch, anyone with muscles like that would need lots of protein, but what about me? They haven't even seen me use my power, and they know I have to eat a lot of iron to fuel it. Do they have telepaths? Psychics?' Lance shook his head. 'You're being held against your will, and your biggest concern is how the enemy knows what to feed you?'  
  
Lance sat against the wall, drumming his fingers and contemplating all of this when the door swung open. Four sets of eyes shot toward the sound and watched as six gaurds marched in, toting stun guns, and in the case of one guard, a semi-automatic. Lance's breath caught in his throat. "Oh shit," he moaned.  
  
"AGAINST THE WALL!" the guard with the gun hollered. The gunman then swung his weapon around and pointed it at Fred. "And I don't want any trouble from you, fat boy, or I'll pump your ass full of bullets. Understand?"  
  
While the gunman's attention was occupied, Lance closed his eyes and sent a shockwave through his feet into the floor. A soft vibration rattled through the metal room, and then stopped. 'What the.' Lance tried again, harder this time, but all he got was a mild shake.  
  
"Hey, knock it off!" one guard shouted, and drove the stun gun against Lance's stomach, sending a sharp jolt of pain through his body. His legs kept their integrity for a moment before buckling, sending him to the floor. "Serves you right, you damn freak," the stun gun man said. "All that rattling hurts my fillings. Come on," he said, turning to his fellow gaurds. "Just grab one." The man reached out a gloved hand and grabbed Pietro's arm roughly. "He'll do."  
  
Pietro panicked. His first instinct was to run away fast enough to break the sound barrier, but the men had too hard a grip on him, and the second he tried, the stun gun hit home, making contact with the center of the lower spine. The shriek was awful.  
  
The gaurds dragged him to the other side of the room, and without a moment's hesitation, they drew out their nightsticks and began to beat the hell out of Pietro. He had cowered on the ground and was using his hands to cover his head. Blood spurted out of his nose as one caught him on the side of his face.  
  
"Oh God, Pietro!" Lance yelled to his friend. Climbing to his feet, he charged at the gaurds, only to be met with another stun gun to the stomach. Once again, he fell to his side, landing beside Toad, who Lance had failed to notice trying the exact same thing just moments before. Together they lay on the ground, watching their friend take hit after hit.  
  
"Thwack!" with a final blow to the head, Pietro passed out and the gaurds left as quickly as they'd come.  
  
As soon as the room was vacated, the three boys ran to Pietro's side. "Hey, Pietro, wake up man!" Fred yelled at him.  
  
"Shut up, Blob," Lance said shortly. He was looking over Pietro's wounded frame, trying to access the damage. Already bruises were showing up on his pale skin, and his eye was starting to swell. Lance took off his own shirt and held it to Pietro's nose to stop the bleeding.  
  
"Is he bleeding out his ears?" Toad asked.  
  
Lance checked. "No."  
  
"Then he must be Ok," Toad responded.  
  
Lance gave him an odd look. "How do you know?"  
  
"I saw it on 'King of the Hill'."  
  
"Just help me move him," Lance muttered. He grabbed Pietro under the arms and proceeded to drag him over to his sleeping mat. Halfway there, Pietro's good eye cracked open. "Lance? Are they gone?" he croaked.  
  
"Yeah," Lance answered him. "Yeah, they're gone." He laid Pietro back on the mat. "Try and stay awake, Ok man?"  
  
Toad sat back looking worried. "Yo Avalanche.how we gonna get out of here?"  
  
"Yeah," Fred chimed in. "What are we gonna do? Come on Lance, you're the leader."  
  
Lance continued to clean the blood off Pietro's face. He was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, "I don't know."  
  
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Lance was dreaming.  
  
Well, not so much dreaming as remembering. Remembering a long time ago, before he joined the Brotherhood, before his parents died and he had to go live with Joe the Asshole and his Stepford wife, Amy. Before he had any real problems.  
  
He remembered being only seven years old and sitting in the back of his dad's old Volvo. His family was going on a trip to go see his grandparents, and they had been driving for six and a half hours now. Six hours and forty-two minutes to be exact, and Lance had felt every single minute. A horrible pounding headache was starting to make his stomach turn, but maybe if he sat very still the feeling would go away.  
  
His mother, like all mothers, knew instinctively that something was wrong. She turned backwards in her seat to face him. "Lance, honey? Are you alright?"  
  
Lance answered her by throwing up Cheerio's and grape juice all over the back seat.  
  
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Lance awoke with a start. 'What a weird dream', he thought, before he realized that it was not just a dream, but also a warning that history was about to repeat itself. Scrambling to his feet, Lance raced across the room and made it to the bucket just in time to empty the contents of his stomach.  
  
For the past few days, or at least what he figured was the last few days, Lance had been feeling absolutely terrible. It started with a mild nauseous churning in the pit of his stomach, and before he knew it, he was throwing up every time he ate and.well, to put it as politely as possible, let's just say that he was using the bucket more frequently than the rest of the group. He was frequently dizzy and weak as well, and when the gaurds came in to beat him or his friends, he offered little resistance.  
  
Just about finishing up, Lance spit into the bucket and leaned back against the wall to catch his breath. The others weren't awake yet, but they would be soon. None of them could sleep very long in this harsh light. He began drumming his fingernails on the floor again, and was surprised when they made no noise. In his agitated state, he had bitten them down to nubs. With nothing else to do, he chose to pass the time by looking for patterns in the guard's schedule.  
  
So far, he had deciphered that they were probably being fed twice a day. They didn't have enough food to ever feel full, but none of them were exactly starving either. Eleven meals had been pushed through the two-inch slot in the door, calculating to about five and a half days of captivity. The problem with the pattern was the complete lack of one when it came to the beatings. Sometimes they didn't come for three meals worth of time, sometimes they came twice between meals (time for Lance had stopped existing in days or hours; it was only measured in units known as 'the time between meals').  
  
As for the beatings themselves, no pattern existed there either. The guards had come 14 times now. They never went after Fred (obviously they could see the pointlessness), but twice now they had beaten Lance, and four times they had beaten Pietro. Todd, however, was clearly their favorite target, the victim of eight beatings. Each time, the gaurds would laugh their asses off at the way Todd would shriek and try to jump out of the way of the nightsticks. "Ha, ha! Listen to him scream. Like a girl! Ha, ha, look at him jump! Stupid mutie," they would taunt the fourteen-year-old frog boy. Lance shuddered at the memory.  
  
"Lance, you already awake, yo?" Todd said from his corner, yawning and stretching. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and noticed that his friend was huddled up on the floor next to the bucket. "You been getting sick again, huh?" he said.  
  
"Yeah. I'll be Ok."  
  
Todd shook his head. "Man, we gotta get you outa here."  
  
Lance was about to point out that with a broken finger, more bruises than could be counted, and most likely a concussion from that last beating, Todd was more in need of rescue than anyone else, but at that moment, a group of gaurds burst into their cell.  
  
Todd instantly huddled into a ball in the corner, a gleam of absolute panic in his eyes, but the gaurds didn't look his way once. Instead they crossed the floor and kicked Fred in the gut. "WAKE UP, FAT BOY!" one shouted.  
  
"Hey, what is this?!" Fred growled, just before the automatic was shoved directly under his nose.  
  
"You can come with us peacefully, or you can come with us dead, it's your call," the guard ordered.  
  
Fred was indignant. "I ain't going nowhere with no one!"  
  
"Alright," the guard said, a hint of a sinister grin touching his lips. He swung the gun around and pointed it at Todd. "Then we'll kill all of your buddies here, starting with this guy." Todd cringed and shut his eyes, on the verge of a breakdown.  
  
From his corner of the cell, Lance could see that Fred was becoming enraged. If he went Incredible Hulk on the situation, one of them might get shot. In fact, one of them was almost bound to. Quickly, he caught Fred's eye and shook his head. Fighting back at this point was suicide.  
  
The problem was, now Fred didn't know what to do. Taking orders from Mystique or Lance was one thing, but coming up with plans of his own was not exactly Fred's strong suite.  
  
"Well? What's it gonna be Fat boy?" The gunman pressed the barrel of the automatic against Todd's head, coxing a whimper out of the frog boy.  
  
"Don't hurt him. I'll go." Fred allowed them to place chains on his wrists and lead him at gunpoint from the room.  
  
Lance watched the whole scene play out in front of him. As the door slammed shut, he quickly yelled out, "Blob, I'm sorry," and then winced. 'Could have at least had the decency to use his real name.' "I'm sorry, Fred," he added, but by then it was too late, Fred was gone, and there was no telling when or if he was coming back. Lance put his head in his hands, unable to stop shaking.  
  
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That's chapter 2. See that button down there? It's for reviews. (I'm such a review whore.) 


	4. And Then There Were Three

Wow! Thank you guys so much for your reviews. Mocla, Meep, Lost Angel, thank you for your support. Miracle Chick, you especially seem to like it, which is the highest form of flattery I could imagine. Thanks.  
  
I still one nothing. Marvel owns it all.  
  
On with the show!  
  
- - -  
  
The ten by twelve foot metal cell, somewhere in the middle of a small building, which was somewhere in the middle of nowhere had become so silent that it was just about the loudest silence in the history of the world.  
  
In his corner of the cell, Pietro sat curled up into a little ball, his eyes bloodshot and ringed in darkness. None of them had slept since the guards had taken Fred away. Sometimes he sat still; sometimes he rocked himself back and forth with his eyes shut. Without really knowing why, he sometimes sang softly to himself; no one acknowledged it, and in a few minutes it stopped. Pietro could only think one thing- Fred was gone, maybe dead, and it was only a matter of time before he was next.  
  
To Pietro's right, Todd was hunched up in the nearest corner, shaking. His skin, which had always been pale, had turned some kind of a deathly white, except in the places where it was a badly bruised purple, which was almost everywhere. Some of the time he sat quiet and numb, staring at the chrome (always fucking chrome!); sometimes for reasons he couldn't quite grasp, he burst into tears, loud sobs escaping his throat and echoing through the room, eating up the silence. No one acknowledged it, and in a few minutes it stopped. There was only one thing that Todd could grasp for certain and it was this- Fred was gone, probably dead, and it was only a matter of time before he was next.  
  
On the far side of the room, Lance was sprawled out flat on his back, his eyes shut as he feigned sleep. His mind was working through pattern after pattern, as if he had decided that the second he managed to figure out the guard's routine, they would all be set free. 'Let's see,' he thought. 'Eleven meals when Fred was taken, two since. The gaurds have come back once, beat me, then left.' His mind was racing, his stomach churning, and he was getting nowhere. Slowly, he cracked open his purple and swollen eye at half-mast and acknowledged the fact that he was going insane. 'Todd is crying, Pietro is singing "Monkey Wrench", and I'm going round the bend.' he thought. 'If there is a pattern, I don't know what it is.' Lance did know one thing for sure. Fred was gone, almost certainly dead, and it was entirely his fault.  
  
At that moment, the gaurds came in, grabbed Pietro, beat him, and left. No one acknowledged it, and in a few minutes, it went away.  
  
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"Thwack!"  
  
The sound of Todd slamming against the steel door of the cell resounded though the air for the five-hundredth time in the last hour or so. Sometime after his little crying fit, Todd had himself a second wind and began to hop around frantically, in search of a way out. 'Doesn't that hurt him?' Lance thought. He knew that Todd could really get up some serious momentum when he put his all into his jumps. 'Maybe he just doesn't feel pain anymore.'  
  
"Hey you guys, we gotta get outa here, yo!" Todd cried out. He was becoming hysterical. "Man, we have to find a way out! They're gonna kill us!" His yellow eyes darted around the little room, finally resting on Lance. "Lance, yo! Avalanche, we gotta come up with a plan. Get up, yo!" When Lance didn't budge, Todd tried again. "Come on, man, you're the leader, so lead! Get up!" Todd lifted Lance's head and looked him in the eye. That's when he realized- Lance wasn't getting up because Lance *couldn't* get up. His face was pale- almost as pale as Todd's once was- and his eyeballs seemed sunken in. His brown hair seemed a little thinner, and his once muscular frame looked frail and diminished. 'He looks kinda like me,' Todd thought. 'Or at least how I looked before I came here.'  
  
Lance managed to pull himself into a sitting position, but when he tried to get up, his legs wouldn't obey. "Sorry, man," he croaked to Todd, managing a slight grin of apology. Todd shuddered at the effect, which was rather like the menacing grin of a skeleton. Lance was so thin, he looked like a victim of the advanced stages of cancer, and Todd guessed he might live another week or two. 'Our leader is as good as dead,' he thought. He wasn't a bright guy, but now he finally understood. They had no hope.  
  
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An unknown amount of time passed- it didn't matter how much. Time had no meaning here. Its fingers couldn't reach this place.  
  
Todd had finally given up throwing himself at the door, and he retreated to the corner where he now sat, crying his eyes out. From his mat on the floor, Lance watched him. 'Poor guy,' he thought. It was sometimes hard for them to remember that Todd was so much younger than them, only fourteen. 'Just a kid, really.'  
  
Lance knew that, despite his immaturity, Todd was a great accepter of things. Todd had once told Lance that he knew that he was ugly, and that he knew he would never get laid. "It's not *such* a big deal, yo. I got over it a long time ago," Todd had said. He just *accepted* things like that. But the idea that they would be stuck in here until they were dead, murdered at the hands of psychopaths, that was too much for him. He was becoming unglued.  
  
The creaking noise that Lance had come to associate with pain and suffering sounded through the air. This time, though, he didn't even flinch; he was just too tired. "Go ahead and have your fun, guys," he muttered. "It must make you feel like really big men, beating up on sick and wounded kids."  
  
The guards ignored him and moved toward Todd and Pietro. "You two. Come with us," the gunman ordered.  
  
The reaction of the two mutant boys was nothing short of hysterical.  
  
Todd, who had been in tears before the guard's arrival, flattened himself against the back wall, sobbing and pleading for his life. "P-p- please, yo, don't m-m-make me! Please!" Pietro was quick to join in, breaking down into fresh tears and started repeating himself over and over. "Oh man, oh man, oh man---"  
  
The gunman turned to the other guard and shrugged. It was almost never this easy. Two guards approached Todd and Pietro, slapped handcuffs on them, and simply lead them away. They followed, as if in a dream state. It just wasn't real to them; it had to be some kind of nightmare.  
  
Lance played the roll of the ever-present observer, so sick that they didn't even bother to have someone stand guard over him. 'The door is open,' he thought. 'It's right there, open and waiting for me to run out of it, and I can't even stand up.' The guards and his friends exited, slamming and locking the door behind them.  
  
It felt like the room was spinning. 'I'm alone now,' Lance told himself. 'This is it. Pietro and Todd are as good as dead.' The room was utterly silent for about ten seconds before Lance crawled to the bucket and threw up.  
  
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This chapter is a little shorter than the others, but so far it's also one of my favorites. Please review 'cause I *LOVE* reviews. 


	5. Todd and Pietro

Wow! I have more reviews than I can credit here, so thank you so much to everyone! Miracle Chick, it's so nice to have a fan.  
  
This story, it turns out, will be 12 chapters long. I've written all but one, so hopefully chapter updates will be often.  
  
To everyone who is worried about Freddy, Todd, and Pietro- keep reading. You might have a right to be.  
  
I once read somewhere that Pietro cries silver tears because of his mutation (something about the fluid making him more aerodynamic, I guess). If this is wrong, please tell me.  
  
On with the show!  
  
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The hallways in this place are full of ghosts.  
  
Many mutants have walked their last mile down these cold walls, their hands chained, lead by guards that held them in contempt. They were prisoners headed toward execution, and their crime was being the possessor of an active X gene. Some chose to walk with their head high, going out in a moment of dignity; others had to be half dragged to their deaths. None of the guards ever called out "Dead man walking!" like in the old prison films, but perhaps that was only because in this place, mutants were not generally thought of as men.  
  
Pietro and Todd were walking that last mile now.  
  
Through a silvery curtain of tears, Pietro stared at the ground, watching the floor bob up and down as he marched the hall. A glance in Todd's direction confirmed that the frog boy's endless torrent of tears had finally ceased. Pietro was a little taken aback, but he guessed that no one could cry forever.  
  
He turned his blue eyes to the surrounding hallway. Tall and metal, like the rest of the building, it was flanked on both sides by unmarked doorways. 'I wonder how they know where to go,' Pietro thought. He was beginning to feel a little dizzy.  
  
The guard halted in front of a steel door, same as the rest, while Todd's guard continued to lead him onward. Pietro felt a sharp tug on his torn and dirty shirt, and saw that Todd, in his desperation, was hanging on for dear life. "Don't leave me!" he shrieked, just before the guard yanked him away to another door. Pietro could only watch sadly. None of this could be real, could it? They weren't *really* going to die, were they?  
  
Pietro was led into a very small, steel room, like a miniature version of his cell. The only differences were the dim lights, a stark contrast to the bright lights of the halls, and the observation window on the far side of the room, which peered into a much larger cell. The speed demon watched through this window as a guard half lead, half dragged Todd into the big room.  
  
"ON YOUR KNEES!"  
  
Todd complied, perhaps only because his legs no longer possessed the ability to hold him up. To Pietro, it looked as though he were about to piss himself. The guard nodded to his left, and three others walked in. They stepped up to Todd, pulled out their nightsticks, and proceeded to hit him.  
  
Pietro winced, but this wasn't so terrible. They'd all been through this almost twenty times before, and Todd frequently took the brunt of it.  
  
"Smack!" The sticks continued to fall, connecting with every exposed inch of Todd's body. Todd, in a weak defense, had tucked his head under his hands, so they beat his hands, breaking all his fingers one by one. He screamed and screamed, pleading to no one for help. They kicked him in the stomach, causing him to cough up blood. "Ahhh! Help! Someone! Ow!"  
  
Pietro was getting really worried again. They should have stopped by now. It never went on this long before. They were *really* hurting him. Suddenly, Pietro couldn't stand to watch this anymore. He shut his eyes, but there was no way for him to drown out the horrible sound, the thwack of the wooden nightsticks against flesh, and the snapping of Todd's fingers.  
  
"Ah! Ow! Help, please! Pietro, help me!"  
  
Pietro's eyes shot open. How could Todd know that he was watching? He didn't of course; he was just panicking. Oh God, please let it be over soon.  
  
"Pietro! Help!"  
  
"I'm here, Todd!" Pietro said softly. He was starting to cry again, and he couldn't stop. "Don't worry, I'll think of something."  
  
The tall guard on the left brought down the nightstick with a final "THWACK!" to the side of Todd's head. The young teen's body fell to the ground, a crimson puddle spreading slowly across the floor.  
  
"No," Pietro declared to the empty silence of the room. "No, you're Ok Todd, just get up. Get up, Ok?" He was shaking so badly now that it felt like Lance was letting loose an 8.3 on the Richter scale. "Get up Todd, get the fuck up!" Pietro yelled. He watched as one of the guards dragged Todd's lifeless body across the floor and out a side door. Then he fell to the ground in a dead faint.  
  
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"2,326; 2,327; 2,328---"  
  
Lance had spent a lot of time thinking about the patterns of the gaurds, and he came to a very important conclusion: It didn't matter worth shit. He could come up the equation that unlocked the meaning of life, the universe and everything (he did know that the answer was 42), and they were still going to kill him and all his friends.  
  
So now Lance had a new goal. He was going to lie here on the ground and count all the way to ten thousand, even if it took him all day and all night. You see, when Lance was a little kid, way back when stuff was still happy and nothing was too hard, he would fall asleep every night trying to count to ten thousand. It was just some stupid thing he did, and he never made it very far, maybe to six hundred. He was always out before even getting close to one thousand, but today he was gonna count all the way to ten thousand. This way, he will have accomplished at least one goal before he died, and not even those piss ant guards could take that away.  
  
"2,345; 2,346; 2,347---"  
  
The door creaked. Lance didn't even look up; there was no need. The guards were different every time, and yet at the same time they were all the exact same guard, just some asshole who like to beat up mutants. He might *look* different each time, but he never really changed.  
  
"You come to kill me?" he asked in a deadpan voice, his eyes never leaving the ceiling. "Well, come back tomorrow, I'm trying to count to ten thousand here, and I don't want you messing me up."  
  
He heard no reply from the guards, only a loud 'Thunk!' and the slamming of the door.  
  
Startled, Lance's eyes shot over to see what had made that noise. He sucked in a sharp breath. "Pietro!?"  
  
At first, Lance was sure that Pietro was dead and the guards had decided to leave his body here as some unusual form of torture. After all, the younger boy's skin was more than just pale, it was actually *gray*, and his limp body lay in a pile by the door, unmoving. But after a moment, Pietro began to stir, his deep blue eyes opening and closing uncertainly.  
  
"Lance?"  
  
Still lacking the strength to stand, Lance crawled over to his friend. "Hey Pietro," he said softly. "Are you Ok?"  
  
"I--- what?"  
  
Lance tried again. "Pietro, do you know where Todd is? Is Todd coming back?"  
  
Something in Pietro snapped. He began shaking and gasping for breath like a fish without water.  
  
"Pietro? Pietro, what's wrong?" Lance cried.  
  
He could not answer. Instead, Pietro opened his mouth and began to wail, a loud, almost inhuman sound, like a dog with its foot caught in a trap. He cried and sobbed and yelled and made about every noise he could, but he did not answer. He didn't have to. Lance knew. He knew that Fred and Todd were both dead, and that there was no way out. He was the leader and more than half his team was dead--- more than half his *friends*.  
  
So Lance did the only thing he could do. Dizzy and sick with the effort, he lifted Pietro into his lap and held him, even rocked him back and forth like a baby. Even so, the thin track of silvery tears continued to spill from the boy's bloodshot eyes.  
  
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Wow, this one is short too. Oh well, the next one will be pretty long, and I'll update more quickly next time. Reviews are always nice! 


	6. Rescue!

Alright, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH FF.NET? Every time I upload something, all the apostrophes and quotation marks get replaced with little symbols. Since I really cant write without them, I guess you'll just have to work it out. Wait, I could change it to British style. That would certainly help. Ok – means that someone is talking, like quote marks. Thank God I read Trainspotting or I would have never thought this up.  
  
Anyway, this is the chapter a lot of you have been waiting for, but don't worry; the story is not almost over or anything. As I mentioned before, it's 12 chapters long. And almost completely finished.  
  
Thank you so much for the reviews everyone! I've almost beaten my record of 34 reviews! Miracle Chick, do you think maybe you're getting too emotionally involved in this? Just kidding, as far as I'm concerned, you wanting to curl up and die means that I'm doing a good job of making my story genuinely sad. Just don't die yet. Still a lot of story to go, and you're my favorite reviewer!  
  
On with the show!  
  
- - -  
  
The food wasn't coming as often.  
  
At first Lance had thought it was simply his imagination playing tricks on him. But no, they had received exactly six meals through the little slot in the door since the day Todd taken his last trip down the hall, and it had certainly been more than three days. Perhaps six. That meant that they were down to one meal a day. This wouldn't be *too* much of a problem, except that they were getting *exactly* one meal a day, which had to be split between them.  
  
A rather irritating side effect of Pietro's mutation was his constant need for food to support his super fast metabolism. Just like the way a hummingbird has to drink half its weight in nectar to keep its wings flapping, Pietro needed about twice the food of a normal human being. And not just any food he wanted, but *healthy* stuff. Lance could remember one day last year when Pietro blew up at him, saying he was sick and tired of Lance telling him what to eat and when. Lance, feeling a little indignant, had told him, -fine, do whatever you want!- That evening, Lance came home to find a half eaten McDonalds Quarter Pounder meal on the table, and Pietro, crashed on the couch, moaning that he felt like he was going to die.  
  
Suddenly, this little mutation side effect wasn't just irritating; it was dangerous. Which is how Lance wound up sitting on the floor, legs sprawled out in front of him, struggling to get Pietro to eat something.  
  
-Come on, man- he muttered, offering an apple slice. -You gotta be starving.-  
  
There was no reply. Not that Lance was expecting one. Ever since Pietro had witnessed Todd's death, he had been completely silent. At the moment he sat propped up against the wall, staring off into space, his blue eyes cloudy and vacant. Lance waved a hand in front of Pietro's face. -Hey man. You awake?- No response.  
  
Sighing, Lance put the apple back on the tray. Better save this for a time when Pietro was a little more lucid. Carefully, he lowered himself back onto his mat and shut his eyes, shielding them from the light. Sometimes it felt as if that light could bore itself into his brain and conduct a frontal lobotomy. Tiny little doctors, all wielding tiny little knives, slicing into his gray matter--- 'No', he chided himself. 'No, I have to stop this; I have to think normal thoughts.' But every day it was getting harder and harder to do so. Because all the time he was getting sicker, and now Pietro seemed to have a little case of it, whatever it was. And all of a sudden, Lance realized that he was talking to himself, sometimes holding one-way conversations with Pietro. He continued his counting, always picking up where he last left off. Last night, he hit 14,000. And all the time, he kept wondering when it might be Ok for him to just let go and die. With that thought in mind, Lance drifted off into an uneasy sleep.  
  
He awoke suddenly an unknown amount of time later to the sounds of a weak struggle. -C'mon, hold his legs- a deep voice boomed. It was followed by the sound of panicked whimpering.  
  
Startled, Lance turned his head to the side a little too quickly and winced at the dizzying sensation. Opening his eyes, he saw a small group of guards, maybe five, but it was hard to count with the room spinning like it was. All of them were huddled around Pietro, but none of them held automatics this time, only stun guns. All of them except one, that is.  
  
In the hands of the head guard was a sledgehammer.  
  
Somewhere in the far off corners of his brain, Lance thought that he should be worried about this, that something was very wrong. The working part of his mind, however, couldn't seem to process the situation. Every time it got close, the room would spin some more and things would become hazy and swimmy, and he would start to count again until it stopped.  
  
-Ok, hold out his left leg- someone said.  
  
-14,867; 14,868; 14,869--- Lance continued to listen to the struggle, though it sounded strangely muffled to him, and if his was listening through earplugs. Then suddenly there was the sound of a sharp crack, like someone breaking a pencil. It was followed by about two seconds of silence, and then a scream so shrill that even in his confused state, the hair on Lance's neck stood on end.  
  
And then, before he could figure out what was happening, he was alone with Pietro again.  
  
The younger boy had turned white as a sheet, and his leg was bent at an angle in a way that made Lance feel sick to his stomach again. The screaming had stopped, but he continued to whimper and sob, his silvery tears running into a puddle on the ground.  
  
This all upset Lance, but for some reason, he couldn't understand why.  
  
-14,888; 14,889; 14,890---  
  
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-The X-jet is preparing to land. Please check your seatbelts and observe the no smoking sign. Thank you for flying Mutant Air.-  
  
-Knock it off, Jean,- Scott said with a laugh.  
  
In the Co-pilot seat, Logan didn't crack a smile. This mission was particularly serious to him, and he didn't like the kiddies making jokes. Just inside the Canadian border existed a building that was rumored to be a subset of SHIELD's mutant testing program. Supposedly, these were the guys who kidnap the mutants and weed out the strong from the weak through acts of torture. The strong were sent on to SHIELD for experimentation and government black ops missions. Those too weak or stupid were terminated. Logan tightened his fist. It was likely that he himself had been held in such a building before his memories were wiped clean, before his whole life had been stolen away from him. Tonight, he was out for blood.  
  
The jet came to a bumpy landing in a forest clearing just under half a mile from the facility. Their objective: infiltrate and rescue any prisoners with as little blood as possible. Of course, that wasn't necessarily Logan's objective. If it were up to him, they would blow the whole building to bits. Professor Xavier told him that he should try to think a little lower profile.  
  
-Alright- Cyclops said, switching into leader mode. -Jean, Wolverine, you come with me up on the roof to the point of infiltration, just like we talked about. Storm, you handle communications and emergency air escape from the jet. And Wolverine- he added, waving a finger in Logan's face, -remember, this is a *bloodless* operation.-  
  
-Kid- Logan snarled, -If you don't get that finger out of my face, the only blood spilled will be yours.-  
  
Scott quickly withdrew his finger. -Uh--- right. Anyway, is everyone ready? Let's go!-  
  
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Major Mathew Jenkins was a terrible chess player.  
  
It was an embarrassment. Most Majors were good at chess because it helps build strategy. Not to say that Jenkins was an inept strategist; on the contrary, he was good at what he did, and what he did was strategize. He was just sick of people beating him at chess.  
  
So he spent some time each late night he worked at his computer practicing, loosing to the computer at a game he hated. But tonight it looked like he might actually win, and he was quite happy about it. –Come on, you bastard- he muttered as he took out the little black queen with his little white knight.  
  
Unfortunately, at that moment three people in colorful costumes crashed in through the skylight in his office ceiling.  
  
Before Jenkins even had time to piss himself, Wolverine had him shoved up against the wall, adamantium claws grazing his neck. -Where do ya keep the prisoners, bub?!- he snarled at the terrified man.  
  
Jenkins opened and closed his mouth a few times, like a fish flapping around on a pier, before managing, -I- I- they're dead! It was a sorry group, no one graduated.-  
  
-You're a liar!- He tossed the man forcefully to Cyclops. -Secure him. I'm going on a little hunt.-  
  
Logan burst out of the small office into a metal hallway so bright he had to squint. So like other the places where he had been held captive. Just a small, one story building with a few hallways of cells. Logan drove his claws into the lock of the first door and kicked it open. Nothing. He moved on to the second door and repeated the action. Nothing. Logan grimaced. He just hoped that little military snot hadn't been telling the truth earlier.  
  
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In a cell at the end of the last hallway, Lance had finally come to his senses. He couldn't explain how it worked, this odd little insanity of his, but at some point he looked at Pietro and just *understood*. The clouds in his brain had faded and he could see that his friend was in terrible pain.  
  
At the moment he was curled up around the boy's shivering form, trying to share some body heat. –it's Ok, man. You're gonna be Ok.- Lance wiped a thin sheen of sweat away from his forehead. 'Pietro is going into shock, that must be the only explanation for the shivering and the teeth chattering, because it's as hot as the fires of hell in here,' Lance thought disjointedly. 'Or maybe I'm just running a fever.' His thoughts scattered, however, when Pietro, though it obviously pained him to do so, turned to Lance and started *talking*.  
  
- I don't like this place, Lance. Too cold.-  
  
Something in those two little sentences, so weakly delivered, struck Lance in a way that nothing ever had before. A look of pained realization came to his face, and for a moment, his lip protruded and his eyes clenched shut, but he managed to fight off the tears. This was too important.  
  
-Pietro; if you need to let go of this place, just do it, Ok man? Don't worry about me, all right? I don't want to see you like this.-  
  
Pietro did not reply. He had slipped out of consciousness.  
  
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Logan was in a bit more of a hurry than he had been just a few minutes ago.  
  
Part of the way through his search, he had run across two soldiers keeping guard, and--- well, his feral side took over. He couldn't help it, he could smell the *death* in all of those rooms, down all of these halls, it all reeked of the blood of the innocent, and it was infuriating him. When he saw those two guards, casually talking as if they hadn't killed just down the hall, Logan knew he had to see them pay. And he did. Repeatedly. So now it was only a matter of time before someone found their *almost* dead bodies and set off an alarm.  
  
Last room. He hoped that Scott and Jean were having a little more luck locating hostages than he was. A quick slice to the lock and a well- placed kick, and the room was open.  
  
When Logan saw the two lumps huddled together in the corner of the far side of the room, his first though was 'corpses'. But no- he could hear the bigger one breathing- and was that little one shivering?  
  
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Lance heard the door open and the footsteps as someone entered the room. No. He could not take any more of this. Not now.  
  
-Get the hell out,- Lance said with all the force he could muster. -Get out, he's already dying, just let him die in peace.-  
  
Under his mask, Logan's face went limp with shock. He knew that voice. -Lance?- he asked, unable to believe it.  
  
Lance used up the last of his energy turning his head. No one had ever addressed him by name in this place before. The sight of the orange clad man with the adamantium claws shooting out from his hands held for a moment before blurring. 'I must be hallucinating,' Lance thought, before he drifted off into unconsciousness.  
  
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-Cyclops to Wolverine! Report back to the X-jet immediately!- Scott ordered into the X-link. -No prisoners found alive.- He put down his communicator and began pacing the cockpit again. Jean watched him silently. She knew that nothing was worse to Scott than a failed mission.  
  
-Where *is* he?- Scott barked. He grabbed hold of the communicator. -Wolverine! Where are you?-  
  
-Hey Scott, I think you should see this.- Jean was staring out the window into the forest.  
  
-What? What is it?- he snapped, before joining her at the window. -Is that Logan? What's he got?-  
  
Jean squinted her eyes at the hulking mutant trudging through the undergrowth with something swung over his back. -It looks like he's carrying someone.-  
  
Scott strained his eyes. -No--- *two* someones.-  
  
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Thoughts? Feelings? Who's happy about Lance and Pietro's change in luck? 


	7. Lance's Personal Hell or One Way Convers...

Wow, I am *really* happy with all the great reviews I have been getting.  
  
Miracle Chick, this is the longest review I have ever gotten. Kudos! I'm glad you get such an emotional response from my story, but try not to get *too* upset, Ok? And to answer your question, no one missed the Brotherhood at school because school was already out. Lance missed his graduation, though.  
  
Sailor X, don't worry, you're not a sicko.  
  
Incrediblecuznz (do you know how hard it is to type your name?) If ff.net doesn't work today, I'll take your apostrophe advice. Also, yes we have more angst on the way. Mostly Lance angst.  
  
Rex, you scare me. Don't kill me, and I'll give you gold--- well, I'll at least keep updating.  
  
Ok, let's get started!  
  
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"I don't like this place. Too cold."  
  
Lance opened his eyes and found himself strapped to a gurney in what looked like the hospital from hell.  
  
The walls were dirty and dark, and the only light in the room came from a bare light bulb swinging back and forth above his head like the deadly pendulum from Poe. Beside him was a metal table with metal surgical tools. Both the table and the tools were a reddish-brown color, eaten by rust. Along the edge of the wall to his left, a rat scurried about its business. Cockroaches scattered about the ceiling. Lance shuddered. He hated cockroaches.  
  
For a while, his mouth filled vaguely with the sour taste of vomit, and he could hear a frightened voice crying down a long hallway, "Son of a bitch! Someone hold his head! He's choking on that shit!" but all of that had faded away a while ago, leaving him in silence once again. Until now.  
  
"I don't like this place. Too cold."  
  
Lance tried to turn his head around to see who it was that so hated this place, but a restraint held his head in place. Out of the corner of his eye, however, he could just barely make out two people- a young teenage boy with brown hair sitting in a crouch, and an eight hundred pound mutant crushing-machine.  
  
"Fred? Todd?" Lance frantically tried to twist his head around. "Help me! Cut me loose!"  
  
"I don't like this place. Too cold."  
  
"Why do you keep *saying* that?" Lance cried, his voice high and cracking with panic. With a forceful jerk, he managed to turn his head to the left. What he saw made him yelp with terror.  
  
Both Todd and Fred's eyes had been sewed shut with a heavy black thread, the jagged stitches running like a line of confused ants. Fred's mouth had been sewed shut as well, but Todd's remained untouched, enabling him to spew the same two sentences over and over again.  
  
"I don't like this place. Too cold."  
  
Tears began to spill down Lance's cheeks. "I'm sorry, Todd. I'm really sorry---"  
  
The two ex-members of the Brotherhood turned their backs and began to walk away. "No, wait!" Lance called after them. He couldn't stand the idea of being left alone in this terrible place. "Todd, Fred, come back! I'm sorry! I really tried---"  
  
It did no good. Lance was alone again in his own personal hell for about fifteen seconds before a group of what looked like doctors rushed in. All of them gathered around Lance's table, and he tried to count them, but their numbers kept changing. Sometimes there were only four, and sometimes there were as many as nine. They all spoke in a weird language that Lance could not understand.  
  
"Nepo mih tuc."  
  
And suddenly Lance wanted to scream, because he realized that this was no hospital, this was hell, and these were no doctors, they were demons dressed as guards dressed as doctors. And one of them held the rusty scalpel.  
  
They were going to make him suffer, they were going to slice him open, because he was the leader of the Brotherhood and he had led Fred and Todd into death. His eyes rolled back into his head, his vision fading away into darkness. The last thing he saw was the light bulb, swinging over his head as the demons began their incision.  
  
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"Lance? You awake, kid?"  
  
The world was swimming back into place as Lance opened his eyes and tried to decipher where he was. Was this a new stage in the torture? Was Pietro alive? His head was hurting him, but that wasn't anything new. What was new was that he was lying in a bed.  
  
"Kid? You Ok?"  
  
Startled, Lance looked up to see Logan sitting at his bedside. So he was with the X-Men? He opened his mouth to speak and was actually frightened by the weakness in his voice. "So it's over?" he asked.  
  
Logan's mouth set in a thin line. "Yeah. Yeah, it's over."  
  
"Pietro?"  
  
"He's --- alive."  
  
It was over. He and Pietro had made it out with their lives. Suddenly, the fact that Lance had just woken up did not matter. It felt as if he hadn't slept in weeks. His eyes shut again, and he drifted off into the first peaceful sleep he'd had in weeks.  
  
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"So Nightcrawler tries to teleport Kitty out of the way, but he misses her and only manages to grab her costume!" Scott laughed loudly at his antic dote; apparently unaware that he was the only one.  
  
'It's a little bit scary, being completely at the mercy of your enemies,' Lance thought to himself. 'Even if it seems like they want to help you, do they really? After all of the trouble I've caused them, how easy would it be for them to inject something a little unfriendly into my system?'  
  
"And the other day, Evan accidentally ran his skateboard over Rogue's favorite CD---"  
  
'It's not that I think that they want to hurt me, really. After all, Dr McCoy is down here all the time running tests and stuff, although that might have more to do with his intrigue at what he found in my bloodstream than his concern for my well being. All day long, I have to hear about it. "Fascinating. This chemical compound caused your X gene to become completely dormant. Of course, it also acted as a poison, but if I could alter it, it might mean a chemical that would help mutants like Rogue control their powers." Wow, I really don't care! All I know is, now I have no powers.'  
  
"She screamed at him for almost twenty minutes at *five-thirty in the morning*. Woke up half the --- Hey, Lance? You awake?" Scott leaned over and grabbed hold of Lance's shoulder. Instantly, Lance tensed up his muscles and sucked in a deep breath. Scott drew his hand back so fast it was as if he had rested it on a hot stove. "Sorry, sorry!"  
  
With his back turned to Summers, Lance smiled softly to himself. He may not be able to get Scott to leave, but he sure as hell could freak him out by pretending to be a spaz. Lance personally hated it when Scott came in to visit with him, especially since he only did it to score brownie points with that bald professor of his. Scott, however, was oblivious to this, and continued his running monologue.  
  
"Anyway, the whole bunch of us went up to the lake last weekend to celebrate graduation, and --- err, uh sorry you missed it. We were all wondering where you were. Uh, I'm sure they'll send your diploma in the mail. So anyway, we were up at the lake and Jean---"  
  
Figuring that Scott wasn't one to get subtlety, Lance grabbed his pillow and shoved it on top of his head.  
  
Scott shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Hey, I'm gonna go, Ok? See ya, Lance." Scott was out the door in about two seconds, leaving Lance alone again with some peace and quiet.  
  
There was only one guy who's visits Lance didn't mind, and that was Logan's. It always went the same way. Logan would walk in and say "Hey kid, how you feeling?" He'd wait a beat for a response that never came, then would add, "Yeah, me too." If Pietro happened to be awake, he'd address him as well. He then proceeded to sit down and read a book for an hour. Lance thought that it was kind of nice, not having to listen to inane, one-way conversation.  
  
A soft cry broke Lance's rambling train of thought. In the bed next to his, Pietro tossed and turned in his sleep. He couldn't move too much because of the big clunky cast on his left leg, signed by each member of the X-Men. Another cry escaped his lips and he began to shudder.  
  
Lance wondered what kind of demons chased Pietro behind his eyelids, although he had a pretty good idea it had a lot to do with Todd. Honestly, it really worried him, especially since Pietro never said a word to anyone. Of course, neither did Lance, but that was because he had nothing to say. No one was sure if Pietro could even comprehend what he was hearing.  
  
Pietro continued to thrash around, and Lance wanted to go comfort him, but he couldn't even get out of his bed without some help. All he could do was lie there and watch as Pietro dreamed of Todd getting beaten to death over and over.  
  
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Lather, rinse, review. Always review. By the way, I beat my previous review record. I'm glad, because I like this story way more than my Lord of the Rings one. 


	8. Alone in the Dark

Hey to all you guys! I keep getting a lot of complaints that my chapters are too short. Sorry, but I don't think they're about to get any longer. As it stands, I'm about half way through writing the epilogue, and I hate it. Oh well. If I can't think of any better ideas, I'll just finish and post it with a warning or something.  
  
Reviews: Miracle Chick, to answer one of your earlier questions, this takes place during the time Mystique is MIA from the Brotherhood house. That's why she didn't rescue them. And Magneto really didn't keep close watch on the Brotherhood at this point, did he? As for the dream symbolism thing, most of it *is* just creepy imagery, but there are a few insights into Lance's character kind of symbolism, which I'll write about at the bottom of this chapter for all who want to see.  
  
Ahra, I never really thought about it like that. Yeah, I guess to the Brotherhood that kind of thing would seem pretty silly, but it does strike me as the kind of thing the X-Men would do, if Kitty organized the idea, of course. But the X-Men *did* really help them out, so I don't think it's inane.  
  
Rex, good to know you wont kill me. Now I guess I can forget about that restraining order.  
  
Charmedfan03, I think you'll see that you and Lance are on the same page when it comes to that dream.  
  
Sierra, Logan wanted to blow it up. The Professor told him to think "lower profile".  
  
On With the Show!!!! - -  
  
Over the course of the next week, the atmosphere of the infirmary changed dramatically for Lance, particularly on the third day when Pietro decided that he was going to talk again (Lance himself finally gave up the silent treatment the day before, figuring that it was a hell of a lot easier to get a glass of water in this place if he asked for it directly). Scott still pissed him off regularly, but now that Pietro seemed far less disturbed than he had when he woke up, Lance could finally stop worrying so much about him and concentrate on recovering.  
  
The day after Pietro began talking again, Dr. McCoy made Lance get up and spend some time out of bed in order to help him regain his strength. At this point, Lance's weakness had dissipated to a dull tired dizziness and a strong stomachache. Unfortunately, all of Lance's clothes were back at the Brotherhood house and Lance spent the day watching TV on the couch in a spare pair of pajamas. Scott and Kurt were given the task of going to the Brotherhood boarding house and picking up some of Lance and Pietro's stuff. "That place is gross," Scott informed Lance as he handed him a suitcase full of clothes. "There were cockroaches crawling all on the kitchen counter." Lance, though he would have given his left thumb not to, shuddered at the image. He hated cockroaches.  
  
After a few days of spending his time lounging on the couch and waiting for Pietro to finally get the hang of using his crutches, Dr. McCoy decided it was probably time for the boys to move out of the infirmary and up stairs with the rest of the house.  
  
"So this is where you'll stay," Logan said as he showed Lance to the same room that Lance had stayed in the last time he had come to live at the Xavier Institute. "We were thinking of bunking you and Pietro together, but he's been doing so well since he started talking again that the Professor thought it might be counterproductive." Lance nodded offhandedly, looking around the room. The first time he had seen it, he had thought it looked much nicer than any room he had stayed in before. Now all he could think about was how it was much too *big* for comfort. And how *creepy* that big closet would seem at night. Somehow his psychology had switched back to that of a seven year old.  
  
"So, you should be comfortable here," Logan said.  
  
"Sure," Lance lied. Logan left.  
  
Lance took a moment to re-familiarize himself with the room. It was just as it had been last time, but at the same time it was entirely changed. The last time he was here, the room had not filled him with such a sense of dread, he was sure of that.  
  
("--- he's been doing so well since he started talking again---")  
  
'Maybe he has, but what about me?' Lance thought. 'Don't I matter? Don't my nightmares matter as much as Pietro's?' He felt sick to his stomach again and he lied down on the bed; and for the first day of many he began to dread nightfall.  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
Lance met up with Pietro in the kitchen later on after everyone else had already eaten. Someone had ordered pizza for dinner, and the two boys were re-heating a few slices.  
  
"So how's the leg?" Lance asked as he poured himself a coke.  
  
"It sucks," Pietro moped. "Thanks to these stupid crutches, I move like a snail." Lance knew what he meant. The other day he had watched Pietro attempt to hobble down the stairs, his teeth gritted in frustration, probably thinking about how he used to clear a flight of stairs at the speed of sound.  
  
"Is that *all* you're going to eat?" Pietro gestured to the one slice of pepperoni pizza on Lance's plate. He had seven slices himself.  
  
Lance shrugged. "I'm not hungry."  
  
"You're still feeling sick, aren't you?"  
  
"Not really." In actuality, there was almost never a time when Lance *didn't* feel sick to his stomach, but there was no reason to tell Pietro that. No reason to make him worry about it. "Hardly ever."  
  
"Well anyway, it's kind of nice to get out of that hospital bed, huh? We finally get to sleep in our own rooms."  
  
Lance's stomach flipped a bit. He didn't want anyone reminding him that he would be spending his night alone in the dark. It was all so *stupid* of course, but he couldn't seem to really convince himself that he was safe. "Yeah," he said shortly.  
  
Pietro took another bite. "It would be better if --- you know, it really *were* our rooms. I haven't seen my room since --- I guess I kind of miss it. Um --- Lance, do you --- miss them?"  
  
A bright anger flashed in Lance's eyes. "Do I miss them?" he said in a flat voice. "Of course I miss them! They *were* my close friends and all, Pietro."  
  
"Ok, jeez, I didn't mean anything by it!"  
  
Lance instantly regretted his little outburst. "Sorry," he muttered. He just didn't want to be reminded of that building, or  
  
("C'mon Lance, you're the leader, so lead!")  
  
the guards, or the cell.  
  
"Listen, I'm gonna go watch some TV, alright?" Lance tossed the remainder of his pizza into the trash and walked off. "Talk to you later," he called over his shoulder.  
  
As soon as he was out of the kitchen, Lance leaned against the nearest wall and placed his fingers to his temples. He was getting one hell of a headache. Hopefully a half hour of the Simpson's would help to dissipate all these  
  
("You guys, we have to get out of here!")  
  
bad memories.  
  
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"Nepo mih tuc."  
  
'Please God, not again,' Lance thought to himself in a panic when he heard the voice. He was back in the hospital that resided deep in the bowels of hell, and the demon doctors once again held the rusty knife just above his abdomen.  
  
"meht rof yrc" one growled in a voice that sounded like Wolverine with laryngitis. "meht dellik uoy."  
  
"No," Lance whispered in a high-pitched whine.  
  
"Meht rof yrc,"  
  
("Cry for them")  
  
"Meht dellik uoy."  
  
("You killed them.")  
  
"No," Lance whispered again.  
  
"Nepo mih tuc."  
  
Lance could only lie still and watch as the demons lowered the scalpel to his belly and sliced an incision. Fire spread across his stomach and Lance screamed at the top of his lungs, pleading with them to stop. As they always did, the doctor demons paused and the fire went away and was replaced with a sharp tickling sensation as dozens of cockroaches scurried out of the cut and spread all over his body. Lance began to scream and panic again, trying to get them off of him, but with his arms and legs strapped down he couldn't, and they were *everywhere*, all over his body, and they were eating him alive---  
  
With a muffled shriek, Lance sat up in his bed. He was gasping for breath and his heart was pounding. Just a nightmare. Same as the night before and same as the night before that.  
  
It was Lance's third night alone in his bedroom, and every night he had the same awful dream, always ending with the roaches. Each time he had it, he would try so hard to cry, but he could not find tears for his dead friends, and so he must be punished.  
  
'Why can't I cry?' he thought. 'I want to cry---'  
  
Without giving it another moments thought, Lance reached into the bedside table drawer and pulled out the X-acto knife he had swiped from the art room two days prior. He grabbed the elastic waistband of his boxers and slid them to his knees. 'I want to cry---'  
  
He didn't feel it as much as he should have. There was some dull pain, a far away burn as the cold steel of the knife sliced into the soft flesh of his thighs. What he *could* feel was the blood running out onto his skin, mimicking the tears that he couldn't make run down his cheeks. It hurt, but it was not enough.  
  
'Maybe if I cut off my balls---'  
  
The though horrified Lance, but also fascinated him in a kind of morbid way. 'I'm sick,' he thought as he brought the knife to the top of his scrotum and applied a light pressure. 'I'm really sick for even thinking this.' He grit his teeth and shut his eyes tight, trying to work up the nerve. 'Trying to work up the balls,' popped into his head, and he laughed humorlessly. It wasn't really funny.  
  
Lance sat this way for almost a minute before he took the knife away. 'Can't even do this right,' he bemoaned. 'Can't even punish myself right.' In a fit of rage and self-loathing, he brought the knife to his stomach and hacked at it twice, leaving two short but deep cuts side by side, like tally marks. The blood ran down over the twin cuts he had made the night before, and the two from the night before that.  
  
For the rest of the night, Lance lie awake. Same as the night before, and same as the night before that.  
  
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Ok, like I promised Miracle Chick: Lance feels a lot of guilt about Todd and Fred's deaths. He was the leader, and when the moment came to act (in the first chapter, when the room was filling with knockout gas), he panicked and because of it, his friends are dead. Now, he believes that he deserves the worst punishment he can think of (Hell, cutting, cockroaches), and who better to administer that then the gaurds? (Remember, the demons look like the gaurds dressed as doctors.) You mentioned the number of the guards in your review, so I'll tell you. The reason Lance couldn't see how many there were is because he was delirious. The poison was giving him a fever.  
  
As for the eyes sewn shut, well, I wanted to show Todd and Fred as kind of crossed out. You know, like how dead characters in cartoons always have X's for eyes. Part of it really was just atmosphere though. I saw something like it in an episode of the X files when I was younger, and it freaked me out.  
  
BTW, if anyone wants to know, in my story, Lance is a little freaked out by cockroaches. So am I. In fact, the idea for this came to me one night when I was listening to CD's and refusing to go back to sleep because I'd just had a dream that I was in a room *filled* with cockroaches. They were on *everything*.  
  
Alright, that's it for today. Review, por favor! 


	9. Help

Hey everyone! Pity me, because I have to get my wisdom teeth out today. That's why I'm updating so early in the morning, cause this afternoon, I'm going to be in a world of hurt.  
  
Yea! Rex isn't going to kill me! Yea!  
  
Marye, I would be truly honored if you wrote about my fanfic.  
  
Thanks Lost Angel  
  
Miracle Chick, the fact that you call my fic believable is one of the greatest complements an author can get. Thank you. As for Lance getting help, well, I think you're right, *someone* needs to get through to that boy, wink wink. Oh, and the thing about the Professor sensing Lance's duress, I figure that Lance is always worst at night, when the Professor is asleep and not really reading anyone's mind. Otherwise, he's just kind of depressed, which is to be expected in his situation.  
  
Charmedfan03, well, we're all a little crazy sometimes.  
  
Ice Princess, I think Pietro's doing a little better than Lance, but really this isn't his story. I really like your idea for a memorial, and actually planned to put a chapter like that in. Sadly, I couldn't find a good place to put it. I'll see what I can do about semi-happy endings and non-creepy psychologists (though neither are a guarantee!)  
  
On with the show! -  
  
"Seven --- eight --- nine --- ten!" Lance grit his teeth as he lowered the bar back onto the weight machine. Even though only two weeks had past since the two boys had gotten out of the hospital wing, Pietro's elevated system had already succeeded in healing the fracture in his leg. Now that he was out of his cast, Scott was in charge of making sure Pietro exercised his leg every day. Pietro, of course, hated this. Which is why Lance agreed to take over Scott's duties for him and follow Pietro down to the weight room each day. And as long as he was there, he might as well tone up.  
  
"Hey Pietro, how's the leg?" Lance asked. It had become something of a joke between them, as Pietro never had anything but complaints.  
  
"It HURTS!" he moaned. "This sucks, I hate lifting leg weights!"  
  
"Oh, stop your whining," Lance said with a laugh as he picked up a barbell. "It could be a lot worse. You almost had Scott Summers as your personal trainer." He puffed out his chest and mocked a salute. "Alright soldier! I want five sets of ten lifts, and make it fast because after this you're giving me fifteen laps in the pool!"  
  
Pietro laughed. "That guy *is* an asshole. Doesn't he ever get on your nerves?"  
  
"Summers? Yeah, but you kind of get used to him. Besides, some of the people here are Ok. Wolverine's actually *nice*, in a distant, I'm- gonna-tear-you-a-new-one kind of way. I can take a little Summers."  
  
"Well, not me. Man, I can't wait until we get out of here."  
  
Lance paused his curls. "Really? Where are you planning to go?"  
  
"Where do you think? Back to the Brotherhood house, with you."  
  
"Going --- what?" Lance furrowed his brow. "Pietro, I'm not *going* back to the Brotherhood house. It's over."  
  
Pietro sat up on the weight bench. "Wait a second. You're not going back?"  
  
"That's right."  
  
"So you're just gonna live with the X geeks forever?!" Pietro exploded.  
  
Lance scoffed at him. "Of course not. Don't be stupid. I turn eighteen in a couple of months. I'll get myself a job, find myself a place- you know, pretend that life is normal."  
  
A dark scowl crossed Pietro's face. "What about Mystique? Are you just going to forget about her?"  
  
Lance grabbed the nearest towel and stormed over to Pietro's bench. "Me forget about her? Pietro, she forgot about us! She sent us on a mission and left us to be tortured and beaten and *killed*! To hell with Mystique!" Lance's face softened a bit. "Besides, do you really want to go back to that? She was only using us, training us so we can kill humans for Magneto later. I'm sick of being used by them."  
  
"Well yeah, but ---" Pietro's eyes held a glint of disbelief, as if he couldn't see what was making this so hard for Lance to understand. "Don't you *want* to get rid of the humans? After what you've seen them do to your friends? After what they did to you, for God's sake! They poisoned you and took your powers away!"  
  
Lance sat down on the bench next to Pietro and wiped the sweat off of his forehead. "Look, it's not that I subscribe to all the pacifist bullshit that Professor guy dishes out, I just don't really want to kill anyone. You know, I've kind of seen enough cruelty and death to last me a lifetime."  
  
"You're a traitor."  
  
"Hey, I'm not the one who --- Look, I don't want to get into any arguments right now, alright? Let's just say that I don't know what I'm gonna do yet."  
  
Pietro considered this. "Ok, but promise you'll at least think about coming back."  
  
"Sure, I'll think about it," Lance said, as he headed off to the showers. He didn't really want to admit it to himself, but he felt sort of guilty. After everything he and Pietro had survived together, it seemed a little wrong to lie to him.  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
At 3:25am that Friday night, a loud but brief shriek bounced and echoed down the second floor hall of the Xavier Institute. The only person in the house who was a big enough insomniac to already be awake was on his feet and down the hall in a few seconds.  
  
Logan was sure the sound had come from just to the left, probably Lance or Pietro's room. Pietro's door was shut, but Lance's was wide open, and Logan could hear him tossing and turning in his sleep. 'Must be having a nightmare,' he thought as he entered Lance's room. He walked up to the bed and shook him.  
  
"Wake up kid, you're dreaming."  
  
Lance gasped and shot up in bed. "Stop it!" he yelped, sweat pouring down his forehead in rivers.  
  
Logan drew his hand back quickly. "You were yelling in your sleep, so I woke you up," he explained, and then crinkled his brow. The boy seemed awfully warm. Logan placed a hand on Lance's head. "You're burning up, kid," he remarked.  
  
A soft knock came from the doorway, and Logan spun around to see Scott, half asleep. "Did someone scream?" he asked.  
  
"Scott, run downstairs and get me the cold compress."  
  
Scott slumped his shoulders. "Logan, it's 3:30 in the morning."  
  
"Lance is sick."  
  
Behind his sleeping goggles, Scott rolled his eyes. "Well, if it's an emergency---"  
  
"Stop being a comedian and go get it," Logan sneered.  
  
Scott left and returned dutifully with the ice. He was greeted with a rather interesting sight- Logan, who had turned on the bedside lamp, was sitting beside Lance on the bed. In Lance's mouth was a thermometer. Scott couldn't help but smirk a little. Logan didn't exactly strike him as the mothering sort. "Here you go," he said, tossing the bag of ice onto the bed. "Is that it, or would you like me to fetch you something else?"  
  
Logan ignored him and pulled the thermometer from Lance's mouth. He glanced at it with a frown.  
  
"What does it say?" Scott asked. Logan tossed him a sideward glance.  
  
"I thought you wanted to go to bed?"  
  
Scott scratched the skin behind his ear. "Yeah, well, I was just wondering."  
  
Logan glanced back to Lance who was silently shivering. He had sweated through his nightshirt. "I'll tell you," Logan said gruffly, "if you go into his top drawer and get him another shirt."  
  
Scott mock-sighed, and went to the dresser. Logan turned his attention back to Lance. "Take your shirt off, Scott's getting you another one to change into."  
  
"W-wh-what's my temperature?" Lance asked through chattering teeth as he pulled the shirt over his head.  
  
"104.6," Logan answered. "You got one hell of a bug there, kid."  
  
"Here you go," Scott broke in, handing Lance his shirt. He glanced down at Lance's belly and raised an eyebrow. "Where'd you get those?" he asked, nodding his head at the cuts across Lance's abdomen. "Did they give you those in that SHIELD place?"  
  
For a moment, Lance had no clue what Summers was talking about, but then realization dawned on him and he self-consciously pulled the quilt up to cover his scars. " 's nothing," he claimed.  
  
Logan frowned and reached over to move the quilt back. "Hey!" Lance protested, but it was 3:30 in the morning and he had a high fever, so he offered little resistance. Logan took a good look at the bright red cuts and furrowed his brow. "Scott, go to bed," he ordered.  
  
Instead, Scott leaned forward to get a better look. "Those are new," he announced. "He did that to himself, didn't he."  
  
"SCOTT!" Logan growled.  
  
"Hey, none of my business," Scott threw up his hands in surrender and backed up. "Maybe I'll go to bed---"  
  
"Good idea," Logan said, and as soon as Scott was gone, he turned his attention back to Lance. "Alright kid, level with me. Have you been cuttin' yourself up?"  
  
Lance froze. There was no good lie for a situation like this. Maybe the best thing to do would be to say nothing at all. He grabbed his shirt and pulled it on over his head, lied down on the pillow, and refused to say a word.  
  
This really might have worked with anyone else, but Lance didn't have much experience dealing with Wolverine. Logan grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him back into a sitting position. "Nope, sorry kid, but you're not going to bed until you answer me. Did you do this to yourself? I already know, but I want to hear you say it."  
  
Something in Lance's brain went frantic. This wasn't fair, he was tired and he was sick and a guy named Wolverine was interrogating him in the middle of the night. This kind of thing never happened to normal people. His whole world seemed to be crashing down around him and he could never get enough sleep and --- oh God, he wasn't about to cry, was he? Please, God, don't let him cry in front of this guy.  
  
Logan sat waiting at the end of the bed, watching Lance bow his head down towards his lap. What was this kid doing anyway, hurting himself like that? A soft sound escaped from the kid's mouth and --- Oh wait, was he crying? Logan sure as hell hoped not. He didn't know anything about how to deal with crying kids.  
  
Lance really tried to fight it. He did *not* want to cry, he could *not* cry, not in front of Logan, but there was really nothing he could do about it now, and before he knew it, he was sobbing and a torrent of tears was running down his face. This was easily the most humiliated Lance had ever been in his life.  
  
Logan, to his credit, tried to hide how awkward this whole situation felt to him and placed a tentative hand on Lance's shoulder. "Kid," he started, then stopped and began again. "Lance, I know that--- being in a place like that can really mess you up. I've been there. But this --- hurting yourself is only going to make it a lot worse in the long run." Lance only continued to cry, and Logan wondered if his words were having any effect on the boy at all. "Lance, where do you keep it?"  
  
With a hiccup, Lance pointed to the bedside table drawer. He knew what Logan was referring to immediately. Logan reached into the drawer and pulled out the knife. "Look at me, kid," he said, and pulled Lance's head up until he could see his eyes. He then took the blade of the X-acto knife and broke it in half. "I don't want to catch you doing this again," he said firmly. "If you feel like doing it, you go talk to me or Xavier or anyone. There are a lot of people in this house, I'm sure you can find someone."  
  
By now, Lance was about done with his tears and was back to shivering. "Oh--- sorry, I forgot," Logan said, and handed him a couple of Aspirin and a cup of water. "This should get that fever down, anyway."  
  
Lance swallowed the pills and choked on the water. Logan slapped his back. "You ok, kid?" he asked.  
  
"I-I-I," Lance hiccupped. "I don't want any more nightmares."  
  
To Logan, Lance looked like a little boy just then, his eyes bright with the high fever and his long brown hair sticking up in all directions. A rush of sympathy washed over him. After all, who knew more about nightmares induced by human cruelty than Logan? "Don't worry, kid," Logan assured him. "I'm gonna sit here with you for a while, alright?"  
  
Lance hiccupped in reply.  
  
Logan wound up staying by Lance's bed until almost dawn.  
  
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It seemed so right that Logan should be the one to help Lance, since they've both been through similar events (though Logan's was quite a bit worse). I really worried a lot about this chapter because I was afraid to make Logan too sappy or care too much, when he's not really that kind of guy, but I *think* it came out alright. If I'm wrong, please (gently) tell me so that I might learn from my mistakes.  
  
Please Review? Please? 


	10. Learn to Live With It

Hey you guys. X-Men Evolution starts up again tomorrow! Are you as stoked as I am? My gums are in complete agony from my wisdom teeth extraction. It sucks extra bad because I can't eat solid food for about 3 days. If in my words of thanks, I miss something, sorry, but the painkillers are making me a bit loopy.  
  
Thanks to my reviewers  
  
Marye, it's good to hear that I'm getting Logan right. That's so sweet of you. I love the idea of you writing about my story. Thanks.  
  
Rex, I'm sorry about your headache. Hope you feel better.  
  
Fyrdera, yea! Bookmarks!  
  
Ahra, you really think I'm keeping everyone in character? It's a little on the hard side, but I'm working on it.  
  
Miracle Chick, I love Scott too, so I'm a little conflicted as well. I just figured that since this is from Lance's point of view, Scott should come off as a bit of a jerk. I'm glad that you think Lance's not going back to the Brotherhood is in character. I was a little worried about that part. And yes, I'm extremely glad that Logan helped out Lance. He really needed it. Maybe they could be friends. hmmm?  
  
Charmedfan03. Wow. You *really* like my story. Thanks!  
  
Sailor X, yeah, I thought that Logan in Evolution is quite a bit more caring and sweet than comic or movie Logan (although movie Logan is really sweet with Rogue). Lance really isn't the crying type, but with a high fever at three in the morning who wouldn't be?  
  
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Thursday morning, four days after he had gotten over his bug, Lance found himself lying on his back in Dr. McCoy's office. He was in his underwear, with a cold, jelly-like slime all over his stomach.  
  
"Alright, now I want you to breathe in and hold it for a few seconds," Dr McCoy said as he pressed the panel against Lance's stomach. Lance winced at the pressure. What was McCoy trying to do, crack his ribs? "Hey, isn't this that thing they give pregnant women?" Lance asked conversationally.  
  
Something about that struck Dr. McCoy as really funny and he laughed so hard he accidentally jabbed Lance under the ribs with that stupid panel of his. "Why, do you want to have a boy or a girl?" he joked. Lance shut his eyes against the pain in his side and decided that this Beast guy was just about on par with Summers, a guy so annoying that he laughed at his own jokes. Lance would only tolerate him because, as the institute's doctor, he owned a lot of needles.  
  
"Anyway, to answer your question, yes, sonograms are given to pregnant women to check the health of the baby, but they are also used to see your organs. I'm checking to make sure that the chemicals you ingested didn't do any permanent damage to your stomach or intestines."  
  
Lance swallowed. "That sounds really serious."  
  
McCoy glanced up at him in that casually busy manner that all doctors seem to possess. "It's not as bad as it sounds. I've already ruled out any major problems, so if we *were* to find anything, it would be easily treated with medicine."  
  
"So I would stop getting sick every time I eat?" That definitely sounded good.  
  
Back at his little monitor, McCoy moved a little red circle over a dark patch. "You wont get *as* sick *as* often. If there is a problem, you might have to learn to live with some discomfort, but let's not worry about that bridge until we get to it."  
  
Lance's face fell. A lifetime of bowing down to the porcelain god every time he ate enough to keep from being hungry? Was McCoy *actually* expecting him to be happy about this? Already he had endured over a month of stomachaches, and he was down to 122 pounds, despite being just under six feet tall. Whenever he took off his clothes, he looked like a walking skeleton with big, ugly marks across his stomach and inside his thighs. It was gross.  
  
McCoy noticed his crestfallen look. "Hey, try not to worry about it. You're probably fine." He grabbed a towel and handed it to Lance. "Here, go ahead and clean up."  
  
"Did you see anything wrong?" Lance asked, as he tried not to focus on his worry. Instead he thought about how funny it was that he was toweling goo off of his stomach while another man in the room snapped off rubber gloves. *There* was a situation he'd hopefully never be in again.  
  
"Well, I'll have to examine the pictures to be sure. Now, I *did* see a slight abnormality on the wall of your stomach, but it might be anything, so don't go getting all upset about it and make yourself sicker. Also," he added when he saw that Lance was indeed getting all upset about it, "I want you to try to subscribe to the idea that this is all in your head. You've just been through a very traumatic experience, and you've already shown signs of not dealing with it in a healthy manner." Lance self consciously pulled the towel over his scars. Dr. McCoy already knew, of course (Logan made him get the cuts examined the day after he found out because some were getting infected), but Lance still didn't like the idea of someone staring at the ugly, red lines covering his stomach.  
  
"Anyway, I should have some answers for you tomorrow." Dr. McCoy slapped him on the back. "Go ahead and get dressed. And *stop worrying*. You're going to be fine."  
  
Lance nodded his head and put on a fake smile. "Ok," he said, but it really wasn't.  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
This was a really stupid idea.  
  
Lance shut his eyes and knocked on the dark wooden door. Maybe he should just forget about this and take off to his room. Yeah, that was probably the best idea. On the other hand--- no, there was no other hand. He was seventeen. He should be able to handle his own problems. This was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid---  
  
"Who's there?" a deep voice yelled from the room.  
  
--- stupid, stupid, stupid--- "It's Lance."  
  
A pause. "Come in," the voice yelled back.  
  
Lance opened the creaky door and entered. As soon as he did, the smell of stale cigar smoke and old Cheetoes overpowered him, and he felt like running the other way. He decided against it. Might as well get this over with.  
  
Logan was stretched out on his bed, a tattered copy of The Shinning in his hands. "Hey kid," he said over the top of the book.  
  
Wringing his hands out in front of him, Lance walked in and took a look around. Logan's room had almost no personality whatsoever. The walls were bare of any art or posters, and the only sign that this wasn't a hotel room was the bookcase in the corner. "Those all your books?" Lance asked, eyeballing the spines of the torn and ripped paperbacks.  
  
"No. I share them with the village of tiny people living under my bed," Logan said deadpan.  
  
"Oh --- uh, you just don't strike me as much of a reader, is all."  
  
Logan lowered the book to his lap and shot Lance a look. "Look kid, did you come in here to insult my intelligence, or do you have something to say to me?"  
  
Lance flushed a bit. This was not going well. "Um, I was just wondering if you could --- help me out with something?"  
  
Logan's face was unreadable. "What did you have in mind?" he asked.  
  
"Um, well --- I wanted to know how you deal with the nightmares," Lance rushed out.  
  
"What makes you think I know anything about that?" Logan said with a slight growl. Obviously, Lance had struck a sore subject.  
  
"Well, it's just that you were one time in a place like that SHIELD thing, and --- and I thought maybe you might know something about it. How did you get rid of the nightmares?"  
  
Logan's face became bitter at the thought. "I didn't," he said shortly.  
  
"You didn't?" Lance asked. His last hope seemed to have been shattered. "Well, what did you do then?"  
  
For a long time, Logan sat silent. Finally he answered, "I learned to live with less sleep. I got used to the fact that it wasn't going to go away." A sardonic smile crossed his lips. "I almost learned to love 3:00am infomercials."  
  
The look on Lance's face was purely incredulous. "So you're saying you learned to live with it?" he asked hotly.  
  
Logan shrugged. "I guess so."  
  
Lance was speechless. This was it. There was nothing for him to do about it; he was never going to get a good night's sleep again. As soon as he could find his voice, he shouted the first thing that came to mind. "Fuck!"  
  
Logan was a little taken aback. Not by the language, of course (he swore like a sailor himself, when the kids weren't around), but by the despair, and especially the *anger* in Lance's voice. Few people have had the balls to blow up at Wolverine that way. "Fuck what?" he asked, as if they were engaging in pleasant conversation.  
  
"Fuck this! Fuck learning to live with it! Everyone wants me to learn to live with it, but maybe I don't want to!" Lance scowled at Logan. "Maybe I'll just kill myself instead."  
  
Logan made an irritated face at him. "You don't mean that, so don't say it."  
  
"Yeah, well, what makes you think I don't mean it?"  
  
"Because if you meant it, you wouldn't be saying it like it like you were trying to threaten me with it," Logan stated. "You said everyone wants you to learn to live with it. Who else said that?"  
  
"What do you care?" Lance spat.  
  
"I asked, didn't I? Look kid, you came to me for help, not the other way around."  
  
That cooled Lance's anger just a little. Logan was right; he was acting like a baby throwing a tantrum like this. "It's nothing," Lance said with a sigh. "I just had an appointment with Dr. McCoy. He said that there might be something wrong with my stomach. It just really sucks, 'cause now I can't eat *or* sleep right."  
  
'So *that's* what all this is about,' Logan thought. "I'm sorry, Lance."  
  
Lance's eyes jerked up. "Hey, don't be. I don't want your pity."  
  
"Well, that's good," Logan said, "'cause I'm not the kinda guy who gives it. But if what you do want is some advice, maybe I can help you there. Two things: first, talk to Jean and the Professor about your nightmares. Telepaths tend to dream wander in their sleep. Tell them to wake you up if they catch you mid-dream. The second thing is: if you happen to be awake around 3:00am, you can sometimes find me downstairs in the TV room, drinking a beer and indulging in the wonders of the Ronco rotisserie. Feel free to join me."  
  
Lance grinned at that. "Thanks," he said.  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
Hope this one was ok too. Review please. By the way, all the stuff about the sonogram is based on personal experience. I was having bad stomachaches last spring, just like Lance, and I had to get one done. I'm telling you, those doctors really SHOVE that stupid panel of theirs right into your ribs. 


	11. Returning to Normal, Sort Of

Still getting over the teeth thing. Sorry to harp, but it *really hurts*. I just finished my story yesterday (I was *almost* done for over a week). I'm glad, because I was getting just a little tired of it. I wonder how real authors can make it through a novel?  
  
Ok, so reviews  
  
Glad you like it, Rex2.  
  
Marye, I guess it would be kind of hard to have Wolverine be friends with *anyone* since he's such a loner, but when you watch the show, you see that he's always really nice to the kids when they need help. Like Rogue in Self-Possessed.  
  
Miracle Chick, whenever you review I always get plenty to read. To be fair, I don't think anyone said "ha ha," to Lance when they told him. But yeah, I know what you mean. Sorry about Freddy and Todd, Miracle, but yeah, they're gone. Don't worry; you can still catch them on the show any given day of the week. As for an epilogue, well I had one that I was working on, and it was coming out *terribly*, so I altered chapter 11 (the next chapter) to be the end. I'll write a little about my epilogue plans after the end.  
  
On with the show! - - -  
  
-  
  
Over the next week or two, Lance found that his life was returning to some bizarre kind of normal. It wasn't the normal he was used to, but a normal that included not always being able to sleep the whole night and a normal where he might spend his afternoon throwing up his lunch. It wasn't a great normal, or even a good one, but it was livable.  
  
Logan helped. For some reason that Lance couldn't quite grasp, Logan seemed to be making a pet project out of making Lance feel better. The day that Dr. McCoy had confirmed Lance's fears that he, in fact, did have a chemical burn on the wall of his stomach and would be forced to take medication every morning for the rest of his life, Lance had walked into his room to find a package sitting on his bed. Inside was a note:  
  
Lance,  
  
I thought this might be more effective  
at keeping the nightmares away than an  
x-acto knife.  
  
Sleep well,  
  
Logan.  
  
Underneath the note was a nightlight.  
  
Even though he was alone at the time, Lance felt an embarrassed flush rush to his cheeks. He hadn't owned a nightlight since he was seven. Still, there was something oddly touching about the fact that Logan had cared enough to go out and buy the thing, and it was probably intended more as a gesture of good will than as something Lance would actually use. A ghost of a smile crossed his face as he placed the nightlight in his bedside table drawer, the same place he once kept the knife.  
  
The two became pretty good friends over many 4:00am talks. Logan always smoked a cigar, and though Lance used to hate the smell, it now seemed kind of nice by association. He even let Lance drink one of his beers once, though he vowed never to do it again, lest the Professor catch him and boot him out on his ass for giving alcohol to a minor.  
  
"You ever watch these things stoned?" Lance asked one night, during a 3:00am infomercial for Wonder Mops. "It's hysterical."  
  
Logan snorted. "Kid, everything is hysterical when you're stoned. Besides, I outgrew that kind of stuff long before the invention of the infomercial."  
  
"Oh, come on. Don't tell me they didn't have infomercials in the 70's."  
  
Logan took another puff on his cigar. "You really have no idea how old I am, do you kid?"  
  
"No." Lance shrugged, "What, 40 maybe?"  
  
"No one knows for certain, but I'm at least 80 years old."  
  
Lance laughed at that. "Oh, yeah right. 80? You're kidding me."  
  
Logan tossed him a sideward glance. "Do I *strike* you as a kidder?"  
  
"Uh --- no." Lance took one last look at Logan before turning his attention back to the TV. 80? He shook his head. Sometimes it was impossible to figure out what Wolverine was trying to pull.  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
"Are you ready, Pietro?"  
  
The group of mutant teens and instructors stood out on the lawn of the Xavier Institute, ready to test the powers of the mansion's new resident speed demon. For over a month now, Pietro had been confined to the slow speed of the rest of the world. Now that his cast was off and his leg was strong enough, maybe he could return to living at light speed again, provided his leg wasn't permanently damaged.  
  
Scott stood next to him, giving out orders as he always did. "Alright, remember what Dr. McCoy said. Just try it out. No need to go Mach 5 or anything. To the tree, ok?" Scott raised a little checkered flag with the words 'Good Luck Pietro' embroidered on the side, made by Kitty. "Go!"  
  
Pietro was back before the flag reached Scott's side.  
  
A little cheer whooped up through the crowed. Pietro, ever vain and arrogant, took a bow.  
  
Lance snickered a bit at that. It was really amazing how little Pietro had changed throughout this whole ordeal. He himself sometimes felt like an entirely different person, the old Lance washed away over night after night of tears.  
  
"Hey, what about Lance?"  
  
Startled from his thoughts, Lance looked up. "What about me?"  
  
Kitty stepped forward. "You haven't tried your powers yet."  
  
A deep-set bitterness and resentment settled in on Lance's face. "I don't have my powers anymore," he said. "That chemical they gave me killed them."  
  
"Well you haven't had any of it for, like, more than a month now. Maybe the effects were only temporary," Kitty said. "You have to at least try!"  
  
"Yeah, quake boy, rock our world," Rogue shouted with a laugh.  
  
Lance could see that he was not going to get out of this so easily. Angrily, he kicked a rock through the grass. "I already told you Kitty, I can't!" He turned to storm off into the house.  
  
"Yeah, and with that attitude you never will," she shouted. "It wouldn't hurt anything for you to just try, but you wont! Just because you're afraid!"  
  
Lance spun back around. Afraid, huh? He'd show her. "Fine! If it's *so* important to you to for me to prove they're gone, then I'll try, Ok!?"  
  
Kitty triumphantly crossed her arms over her chest. "Good."  
  
Lance planted his feet on the lawn and dug them into the dirt. She was right. He was afraid. So long as he never tried to use them, it was easy to pretend his powers still existed. As soon as he saw they didn't, the illusion would be shattered. 'Here goes nothing,' he thought, butterflies fluttering in his stomach. 'C'mon, just one little shockwave, that's all I need.' Lance shut his eyes and concentrated. It should begin with a tingle in the back of his brain.  
  
For close to fifteen seconds, there was nothing. Lance simply continued to stand his ground, not relishing the idea of opening his eyes and facing everyone now that they knew he was no longer completely mutant. A feeling like he might cry hit him so hard that he didn't even notice when the ground first started to rumble.  
  
It caught him by surprise at first, the realization that the force of the butterflies in his stomach had just shot down through his shoes. It was just a mild shake at first, but it encouraged him. He had been so sure that his power had been lost forever. It felt so good that Lance couldn't help but throw his head back and laugh harder than he had in months.  
  
"Lance, stop!"  
  
Alarmed, Lance halted the shockwaves flowing from his head to the ground and opened his eye. He then saw what had caused Scott to yell like that. A deep chasm, maybe four feet wide, had opened up at his feet. He blushed. "Uh --- sorry. Got a little carried away, I guess."  
  
Kitty ran up to him and threw her arms around him with such a force that it nearly knocked him over. "I *told* you could do it!" she said. Her forehead rested momentarily against his chin, and for a fleeting second he had the urge to kiss it. He didn't though. A part of him had really liked her once, but that part of him was gone with the rest of Old Lance. "Couldn't have done it without you," he said with a smile.  
  
A loud sound caused Lance to tear his attentions away from Kitty. The other X-Men were all cheering him on too, even the instructors. Feeling kind of foolish, Lance stepped forward and took a clumsy bow, more in mockery of Pietro than out of pride.  
  
The crowed began to disperse and head back to house, where, Lance would wager dollars to doughnuts, someone would bake a congratulatory cake for them. It was simply the X-Men's style to do things like that. He just hoped it wasn't Kitty who planned to do the baking.  
  
Logan came up from behind him and slapped him on the back. "Hey kid, how's it feel?" he asked in his most cheerful voice, which would actually sound pretty morose to anyone who didn't know him well.  
  
Lance shrugged. "Pretty damn good," he said. "I really didn't think it was going to work, but it's great to have my powers back. I'll probably have one hell of a headache tomorrow, though."  
  
"Pietro seemed pretty happy about it too," Logan remarked.  
  
"Oh yeah, well, he hates living at the same pace as the rest of us snails," Lance laughed. "I'm happy for him. I mean, I worked out with him every day, and --- I guess it's just nice to help someone out."  
  
Logan grinned at him. "You did good today, kid."  
  
The two followed the others back to the house, neither of them noticing Professor Xavier just behind. The older man smiled a little before he rolled off to congratulate Pietro on the return of his mutation.  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
All right you guys, we've got one more chapter to go. I know that it the Evo. Series, Wolverine can remember his childhood (in the episode Rebirth), but it's a long running tradition of the comics that he doesn't know his exact age. Since he was in WWII, he'd have to be about 80. And in the Origin Series, he's over 100! 


	12. An Offer, a Loss, and an Epilogue

This is it you guys. Part of me is going to miss this, but then another part of me is glad that I never have to work on it again. I'll go ahead and post an additional chapter to answer all final reviews and thank the audience (Thanks you guys).  
  
Ex-xox Plus Three- A famous author? Wow, I'm truly flattered, but no, not yet. One can dream, I suppose, but really I'm more of an artist (mostly drawing). I kind of wish I had a nightlight as well.  
  
Hi, serria. Thanks for the review.  
  
Miracle Chick- I'm beginning to wonder if my story might be effecting you a little *too* deeply. Please just don't try anything rash. And don't worry, even if this is the last chapter, it's also the longest and plenty of stuff happens. I think you will find most of your Lance concerns are addressed here. I may write another Bro-hood fic, but it wont be right away. I've got to get back to my art studies and I have school starting again on the 25th.  
  
Charmedfan03, are you bleeding out the ears? No? Then you must be Ok! Yeah, I think you should try to be a little more careful when it comes to your happy dances.  
  
On with the Show!  
  
-  
  
In the course of his life, Lance had not been certain of many things, but he was certain of something: even if he lived to be one hundred years old, he would never get used to receiving telepathic messages. When he heard the words, "Lance, could I see you in my study for a moment," in his head, he jumped about ten feet in the air, earning him a few odd looks. "Uh --- it's nothing," he said to the confused people on the couch next to him as he got up to leave.  
  
Professor Xavier's study was located across the mansion from the TV room (Lance had a pretty good idea that this was not by accident), so he had plenty of time to think as he dawdled along passed the library and game room and the girl's bedroom wing. It was no mystery what the Professor wanted to talk about. Now that he and Pietro had fully healed from their capture and inprisonment, Xavier would send them back to the Brotherhood house. And as far as Lance could see, there wasn't really any way out of it. He had no job, no money, and nowhere else to go, unless he wanted to live on the streets. Well, it's not like he could have expected the X-Men to allow their enemies to live with them forever or anything. Xavier might be nice, but he wasn't a saint.  
  
Lance raised a hand to knock on the heavy, wooden door, but just as he did, he heard, "Come in," in his head. "Jeez!" Lance yelped, jumping in the air again. He shook his head. Telepaths.  
  
"Have a seat," the Professor said (out loud this time) as Lance walked into the office. He took a seat in the big, comfy chair in the center of the study. The whole room seemed to scream intellectual, with its big bookcases and its fancy art. This was the kind of room you brought people to when you wanted to feel superior to them.  
  
"Both you and Pietro seemed to have made a remarkably fast recovery," Xavier commented.  
  
'This is it,' Lance thought. 'He's going to kick us out. Well, might as well take this like a man.' "Yes sir," he said.  
  
Xavier nodded offhandedly. "I'll get strait to the point. I have a proposition for you."  
  
Lance jerked his head up in surprise. This was unexpected. "A proposition?"  
  
"Yes. Lance, the mutant population is growing all the time. As you and Pietro know firsthand, this world is dangerous place for young mutants. For these reasons, I plan to drastically expand the Xavier Institute over the next few years."  
  
Lance looked confused. "I don't see where I play into this."  
  
"More young mutants are going to require more instructors. Lance, I will be willing to send you to college, provided that you would be willing to work for me as a teacher."  
  
For a few moments, Lance was stunned to silence. This was not at all what he had expected. "You want --- to send *me* to college? To be a teacher?"  
  
"Yes. Naturally, you don't have to give me an answer right away. Take some time to think about it."  
  
Lance pushed his lips into a thin line. "What would you say if I told you that I don't exactly strike most as the college going type?"  
  
"I'd say you were an intelligent, young man who doesn't give himself enough credit," Xavier retorted.  
  
"Well --- I appreciate the offer Professor, but I'm going to have to say no."  
  
Xavier raised an eyebrow. "Might I ask why?" he said.  
  
"I don't want to be an X-Man."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"I don't want to be on the X-Men." Lance wrung his hands on his lap as he struggled to find the words to explain. "When you called me in here, I thought you were going to send Pietro and me back to the Brotherhood house, and I knew I didn't want to go back to that. But if I stay here and join the X-Men, I run the same risks I did in the Brotherhood." Lance's eyes shot down to his shoes. "If I were to get captured again --- I don't think I could survive it twice. I'm just not cut out for this kind of thing. Not anymore."  
  
Professor Xavier shook his head. "I understand your concerns, Lance, but you misunderstand me. I'm not looking for another X-Man, although there is always a place on the team for you if you change your mind. I'm looking for an instructor, someone to teach math or history or English, as well as help the children develop their powers. The institute is being transformed from a safe house where mutants can learn to control their abilities into a school with a full curriculum."  
  
Lance looked up from his lap. "So I *wouldn't* have to kill anyone, or have people trying to kill me?"  
  
"No, hopefully you would be able to control your students without resorting to corporal punishment."  
  
Lance considered all of this. Teacher? It was definitely a *weird* career choice for a guy like him. But then again, it sounded like a pretty weird school. And then there was the mansion. A part of him didn't really want to admit it, but this place had grown on him, a kind of symbol for new beginnings. Even the other X-Men were kind of Ok, except for Scott, whom he didn't think he could ever get used to. Besides, where else did he have to go? He raised his head again. "Pietro?" he asked.  
  
"The same offer is extended to him, once he graduates from high school."  
  
Lance glanced at the hundreds, maybe thousands of books on the shelves. "I think I should discuss this with him."  
  
Professor Xavier nodded. "Of course. Take all the time you need."  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
In the den of the mansion, Pietro sat very still on the couch. "So let me get this strait," he said slowly. "You want to work for the X-Men."  
  
Beside him, Lance shrugged. "I think it might be a good opportunity. Besides, I wouldn't exactly be working for the X-Men. I'd be working for Xavier as a teacher, not fighting or going on dangerous missions or anything."  
  
"You'd be training kids to be X-Men. That's working for the X-Men."  
  
Lance waved a hand around as if it didn't really matter. "Whatever, the point is, this is a good chance to get out of everything. We wont ever have to worry about getting captured again. We can go to college, work here for a little while, then get new jobs and live *normal lives*."  
  
Pietro made a face. "Yeah, and all we have to do is sell out to the X-geeks for a few years, is that it?"  
  
"Those 'X-geeks' saved your life, Pietro," Lance snapped at him. His eyes instantly softened. "Look, why don't you think about staying? It will give us someplace to stay, and---"  
  
"I already *have* a place to stay. With Mystique."  
  
"But you don't even know where she is!" Lance cried out in exasperation. "Where do you think we have to go?!"  
  
Pietro was quiet for a moment. "We could find her," he said finally. "It couldn't be that hard. Will you come with me?"  
  
Lance shifted on the couch, his eyes darting every which way but at Pietro. "I don't want to loose you," he said softly. "You're all I've got left of --- of anyone, really. You're like my little brother." He was silent for almost a minute before speaking again. "I can't, Pietro. There's nowhere to look. Mystique doesn't want us to find her. *I* don't want to find her. The Brotherhood is dead, and I'm not interested in starting a new one. I'm nobody's soldier."  
  
"No, you're not," Pietro spat. "You're a traitor. You're abandoning Mystique --- hell, you're abandoning me, and just because you're a big coward."  
  
A hand shot out and pinned Pietro to the couch. Lance twisted his body to face Pietro, his eyes blazing with a sudden rage. "Listen to me," he ordered. "I am *not* abandoning anyone. Are you so thickheaded that you can't see that it's not about what side we're on? The point is getting the fuck out of situations where we could be captured and tortured and killed. And I am NOT a coward, you asshole! I'm just finally figuring things out for myself."  
  
Pietro jerked away from Lance's hand. "Fine! I'll find her by myself! I thought you were my friend but I guess I was wrong!" In a flash, Pietro was out of the room and upstairs. 5.7 seconds later, was back in the den with a packed suitcase. "Goodbye Lance. Try and find me if you ever come to your senses." With that, Pietro was out the door so fast, he looked like a gust of wind.  
  
"Pietro, wait!" Lance called after him. His face turned sour. "Fine, be that way! Just forget about all the shit I did for you when we were locked up. I fucking made sure you ate!"  
  
Scott poked his head in the doorway. "Hey Lance, who're you yelling at?" he asked.  
  
Lance scowled at Scott. "No one. Just leave me alone." With that, Lance marched up to his room and didn't come out for almost the rest of the day. Finally, though, around nine o'clock, he gave into his hunger and went down to the kitchen. Kitty was already there.  
  
"Hey Lance," she said, and then paused. Lance's hair was disheveled and his eyes looked red rimmed and tired. "Are you, like, Ok?"  
  
Slowly, almost uncertainly, Lance nodded his head. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm Ok."  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
  
Over the next month, time moved fairly quickly for everyone in the mansion. The X Men were kept busy with their training and Lance concentrated on figuring out how to deal with everything. Without Pietro around, everything seemed kind of lonely and boring. At first it seemed that no one here *really* wanted to hang out with him- they were already all such close friends, so what did they need with him? On more than one occasion, Lance found himself sitting in his newly gassed up Jeep, ready to go hunt down Pietro and tell him he was sorry for staying with the X-Men, that he would never do it again. But then he would look up at the institute and remember his plans. This was his only chance to have a semi- normal life; he could not let it slip away, even for Pietro.  
  
So he stuck with it. He kept having nightmares and stomachaches, though between medication and just plain getting over it, both were becoming fewer and farther between. He still met up with Logan in the TV room when sleep was impossible or not worth it, and the two of them would watch late night infomercials until morning, or until they both conked out on the couch. One morning, Scott had taken a Polaroid of Lance, who had fallen asleep on the couch next to Logan. At some point during the night, Lance's head had slid from its place on the back of the couch, and landed squarely on Logan's chest. Said Polaroid was now carefully filed away for blackmail purposes.  
  
Problems with Scott aside, the rest of the X-Men were slowly warming up to the idea of Lance as a permanent resident as apposed to an injured pity case. Lance himself had spent a significant amount of his life with no real family to speak of; after his parents died when he was nine, he had been bounced around from foster home to foster home, and not all of them were friendly, if you catch my meaning. Then, of course, there was the eight months he spent in a boy's correctional facility when he was thirteen, a fate he would wish on no one, not even Summers. It was quite possibly the only place on Earth that even came close to the horror of the SHIELD cell. All in all, Lance had spent a good part of his childhood learning to get along with just himself.  
  
But after a year with the Brotherhood, that all changed. For the first time in eight years, Lance had people who he could depend on, and who could depend on him back. It wasn't a situation he wanted to give up. So he did something that he would have never dreamed of just three months before.  
  
He started hanging out with the X-Men.  
  
It was kind of awkward at first, especially since Scott and Jean were pretty much the leaders of the group, and they both regarded Lance as little more than a punk. But Lance was not discouraged. He had learned long ago that if he had to be the outcast of any group, the best people to seek out were the other outcasts. And since the closest things to outcasts in the X-Men were Rogue and Kurt, he started spending more of his time with them. And he found out that he didn't hate it. Gradually, the others began to accept him as well, and Scott managed something like distant tolerance.  
  
Now, on the morning of August 28, Lance pulled his green Jeep into the parking lot of the Bayview Community College and found a spot. He parked the Jeep, took the keys from the ignition, and continued to sit in the drivers seat and contemplate the mess he'd gotten into. 'Oh God, what was I thinking?' he asked himself. 'College? Guys like me don't go to college. They don't get teaching degrees. They become mechanics or construction workers, and- and I can't even *spell* construction worker! I'm screwed!' It was ten minutes to his first college class ever, English, and to put it mildly, he was freaked. "I can't do this," he said to no one in particular.  
  
"Yes you can."  
  
Lance jumped so hard, he banged into the steering wheel and honked the horn, startling a girl nearby. He waved an apology and then returned his thoughts to the voice in his head. 'Professor Xavier, you *know* how much that creeps me out."  
  
"Sorry. I just thought you needed some encouragement. And yes, you can do this. You're too smart to be a construction worker, so give yourself a little credit, Lance. Besides, it's only the first day. Give it a chance. Surely you've done harder things than this."  
  
It was hard to argue with that kind of logic. Lance had most certainly done harder things than this. "All right, Professor," Lance thought back in mock irritation. "If it's really *that* important to you-"  
  
"Atta boy. Good luck Lance. And don't worry, you'll do fine."  
  
Taking a deep breath, Lance stepped out of the Jeep. In front of him loomed the English and Fine arts building, which housed classroom number 117, the room his first English class would be in just seven minutes. "Well, here goes nothing," he said softly to himself, glancing once again at his schedule. "Sure hope this works out---"  
  
The End  
  
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Well, you guys, that's it. It has been a lot of work, but it was a labor of love. Thank you to everyone who read, and special thanks to everyone who reviewed. If you have any questions or comments, review and I will come back with an extra page to answer. I will also tell you what my original plans for the epilogue were (they had to be abandoned because of sucky writing). Of course, if you don't review, you'll never know! 


	13. Review answers and Much Thanks

Here I am, back for a new round of review answers.  
  
Miracle Chick, you flatter me. Of all my reviewers, none has put quite as much feeling into reading my story as you (though I must give props to Charmedfan03 for her happy dance). When I print out my story and all it's reviews, yours will be the ones I will treasure the most. Every time I updated, it was your response I would wait for, always hoping that you would enjoy the chapter. You only had nice things to say, and yet you managed to give me very informative feedback. It's nice to see someone who cares for Lance as much as I do. To answer your question, I will go into my description of the original epilogue in a minute. It contained a paragraph explaining that Pietro joined the acolytes.  
  
Take care, and good luck with all of your writing endeavors.  
  
Sailor X, thanks for all the complements and feedback. I like Pietro too, and ending it the way I did was kind of hard, but I really couldn't see him living with the X-Men the way I could see Lance doing it. As for the cussing, well, I look at a character and think to myself, "how would they respond in real life?" I know on the cartoon Lance can't cuss, but he also can't cut himself up. In this context, it just made sense for the character to use some bad language.  
  
Ex-xox plus three- yeah, I thought it was sort of different, but hopefully not *too* far-fetched. After all, Lance doesn't really *want* to be a teacher, he just wants someplace to live where he can feel safe. Lance as a construction worker? Isn't that ironic (don't you think?)  
  
Thanks to all.  
  
Original Epilogue Idea:  
  
I have this theory about Lance. Underneath everything there's this really good guy, but no one ever bothers to try and bring him out. Kitty managed for a while, but we all know how that ended, so now when I write him into fics, I can't help but turn him into the hero. Maybe I'm just fooling myself, but if you look at episodes like "Joyride", the ending of my fic makes sense on some level.  
  
My original plan for the epilogue was to set it about 10 years in the future, when Lance would be about 27. I was going to have him still working for Xavier as a teacher (English, if you were wondering) even though he no longer had to. The atmosphere of the whole mansion would be something like in the movie, with lots of kids. It would have been written in first person, with Lance thinking back on a lot of stuff, with some funny antic dotes, and in the process explain everything you could *ever* want to know about how things ended up for him, and a few things you probably wouldn't. One part would explain how Pietro joined the acolytes and how they attacked the mansion. Lance still isn't an X-Man, but he helps defeat Magneto's crew.  
  
This concept played all right in my head, but it *sucked* once put on the paper. For one thing, Lance is a cartoon character forever trapped at the age 17. To attempt to mature him as much as I was trying to do is a daunting task at best. The character that was speaking was simply not Lance.  
  
Furthermore, it was *boring*. I realized I didn't care that Lance didn't get along with Summers or that he liked the mansion. It was redundant. Some of the stuff where Lance talks about his job was all right, but like I said, it just wasn't Lance. One thing I kind of liked was a funny story about Lance loosing his virginity and how it was the biggest disaster one could imagine, but it *didn't fit*. At all.  
  
Well anyway, thanks a bunch to my reviewers. And in case you were wondering, "Between the Bars" is a song on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack. When I was uploading the first chapter, I realized I was going to need a title. That song was on my CD player, and the lyrics vaguely fit, so I went with it.  
  
Between the Bars, by Eliot Smith-  
  
Drink up baby  
  
Stay up all night  
  
With the things you could do  
  
You wont, but you might  
  
The potential you'll be  
  
That you'll never see  
  
The promises you'll only make  
  
The people you've been before  
  
That you don't want around anymore  
  
That push and shove and wont bend to your will  
  
I'll keep them still 


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